There are several characteristics and definitions of Executive Functioning. Here are the more significant characteristics that affect students the most in schools.
- Memory: The ability to hold and use information in your memory while performing complex tasks. It is based on using past experiences to apply to the current situation or into the future.
- Emotion: The ability to manage your emotions to complete tasks, or control your behavior.
- Effort: The ability to complete a task while....
- Focus and attention: The ability to maintain focus and to shift your attention to another activity in spite of distractibility, fatigue, or boredom.
- Activation: The ability to organize and begin a task or activity and to independently create ideas, responses, or problem solving strategies.
- Action: The ability to monitor yourself while you work, follow through to the completion of a task, and not be put off by or distracted.
There are several other Executive Functioning (EF) skills that also need mentioning....
Response Inhibition—The capacity to think before you act, to resist the urge to say or do something to allow the time to evaluate a situation and the impact of the what is said or done.
Organization—The ability to create and maintain systems to keep track of information or materials.
Goal-directed persistence—The capacity to have a goal, follow through to the completion of the goal, and not be put off by or distracted by competing interests.
Metacognition--The ability to observe how you problem solve. It includes self-monitoring and self-evaluative skills.
- Self-Monitoring—Recognizing what is going on inside your own mind, body, environment, and relationships.
- Self-evaluative skills—The capacity to evaluate how well you did and to make good decisions about how to proceed.
Time management—The ability to estimate how much time you have, how to allocate it, and how to stay within time limits and deadlines.
Flexibility—The ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks, new information, or mistakes. It relates to an adaptability to changing conditions.
Shifting—The ability to move freely from one situation, activity, or aspect of a problem to another, in reaction to internal or external cues.
Social interactions: The ability to read and react appropriately to social cues and in social situations.
Students need help to develop strategies and skills that assist them in reaching their potential in all of the above skills. This truly requires a full team effort.
More EF definitions #1
More EF definitions #2