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Loading... Distracted: Why Students Can't Focus and What You Can Do About It (edition 2020)by James M. Lang (Author)
Work InformationDistracted: Why Students Can't Focus and What You Can Do About It by James M. Lang
   Books for Educators (40) No current Talk conversations about this book.  SocProf9740 | Jul 11, 2021 |  no reviews | add a review
"A decade ago, James Lang banned cell phones in his classroom. Frustrated by how easily they could sidetrack his students, Lang sought out a distraction-free environment, hoping it would help his students pay attention to his lessons. But after just a few years, Lang gave in. Not only was his no-cellphones policy ineffective (even his best students ignored it), he realized that he, like many of his fellow teachers, was missing an important point. The problem isn't phones. It's our antiquated notions of the brain. In Distracted, Lang makes the case for a new way of thinking about how to teach young minds based on the emerging neuroscience of attention. Although we have long prized the ability to focus, the most natural way of thinking is distraction. Our brains are designed to continually scan our environment, looking for new information, occasionally wandering off in different directions in search of new insights. This is not to say that iPhones are not good at distracting us, but that what they represent is in principle nothing new, because sustained periods of intense focus are not what humans are good at. Of course, we still do need to pay attention to learn. The problem is that we think of learning as a matter of managing distraction, when we should instead think of it as actively cultivating attention. This starts with letting go of technology bans, which are little more than a fig leaf applied to the objective difficulty of paying attention. But it involves more active ways of rethinking classroom conventions too. For example, rather than structuring lessons as 45 or 60-minute blocks of lecturing, teachers could segment their classes into a series of smaller lessons, with regular shifts in focus, appealing to the brain's interest in novelty. Simple changes can drastically improve students' performance, and in Distracted, Lang takes readers on a sprawling tour of how some of America's best teachers are improving student performance using concepts such as modular classrooms, flow states, and student-directed learning. Together, these insights offer a new way of thinking about how to not only more effectively teach a lesson plan, but to teach students the most important lesson of all: how to learn"-- No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)370.154Social sciences Education Education Theory of education; Meaning; Aim Psychology applied to educationLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.7)
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Wikipedia in English
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So, there were far fewer new things to learn in this one.
Also, it seemed to me that this book makes a few common assumptions, very frequently present in a lot of the literature on higher ed instruction: (1) be extrovert, and (2) most of your students are extroverts too and will really like all the active stuff, and (3) have low boundaries with your students. If you are not (1) and do not meet (3), then, you will find the strategies presented in the book not very workable for yourself. Also, I will cope to finding the chapter on mindfulness not interesting, especially, since the author himself acknowledges that the research on the benefits of mindfulness in the classroom is just not there.
Otherwise, this might be a useful book for newer instructors but I would advise them to read Small Teaching first.
However, I do strongly support the attitude that we should cultivate attention but not by hectoring our students to "just focus!", especially, when, at the same time, we demand that they engage in situational awareness (i.e. distraction) in case of active shooter. This is no joke, the whole situational awareness is part of most active shooter drill and training. I think the author is right that there was no golden age when people were able to focus for real and now we can't because of smart devices. That's BS and yet, we hear it all the time.
Instead of fighting distraction, the author encourages us to use teaching practices that cultivate attention, as a skill to be achieved. The actual strategies proposed, though, have the assumptions mentioned above buy helpful nonetheless.
And also, we should read this because distraction / lack of focus is not just a problem for our students. Let's face it, most of us can't get through meetings and convocation days without our devices. We need to stop pretending that this affects only our students.
Anyhoo, despite my reservations, this is very well and clearly written. And I'm saying this as an introvert with the attention span of a fruit fly. (