Jim Pace does a great job discovering resources for our
library. The focus of the collection is to expand the research options and stir the curiosity of our students so they can dig deeper in their subject area, but also to widen the vistas and learn new material and derive unexpected insights.
Moreover, many of our library's acquisitions are applicable to us as educators as well. One
of the recent acquisitions is, Choke: What the Secrets of the
Brain Reveal about Getting it Right When You Have to, by Sian Beilock.
This book tries to cover a lot of ground around the issues of teaching
and learning. If you teach, or if you are a student, you’ll find something in Dr Beilock's research. You can
read more about the book at: http://sianbeilock.com/choke-book.html
.
One of the useful features of the book is the chapter review. If you don't wish to read the entire book, you can thumb through the review to determine if there's something of interest. However, reading the first two chapters is a must in order to get a handle on the terms Dr Beilok regularly uses throughout the book. Also, for the sports fan, Dr Beilock provides many examples of "choking" on the golf course, basketball court, and other sports. There's even an NFL timed intelligence test in the book (just try it, are you smart enough to be an NFL quarterback?). Even though many examples of choking come from sports stories, more arise from classroom experiences and educational psychological experiments. But it all speaks to the point of how can we help students to do their best, especially when it counts the most.
Dr Beilock provides a look into working memory. Sound functioning of the working
memory can help some students to perform better, and other students can get
bogged down by it. Working memory is like the RAM on a computer, there to
quickly access whatever material is being used at the time. But the working
memory can also get filled with other ideas not pertinent the studies at hand,
and the result is “choke.” Very often the experience of choking like this
is followed by a student responding, “I knew that.” Yet, for some reason the
student was unable to access the information needed at the time.
One interesting experiment Dr Beilock explains describes how
math students scores’ were improved by taking time before an exam to write a
self-reflective essay. Students would write about what they were dwelling on
(usually some form of test anxiety), and rather than holding onto
self-defeating thoughts, they actually were able to release those troublesome thoughts
residing in the working memory. The result was better test scores.
Both students and teachers can find things to appreciate in this book. Students can become more familiar with how their brain functions, how their working memory can be aided to function better, and the try their own experiments to find an optimum testing mode for themselves. For instructors, there are important insights from how to free students from stereotypes (e.g. women score lower in math), develop practices for introducing new material, to how to establish a classroom environment for better test results.
If you want to keep up on Dr Beilock and her work, follow
her blog at: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/choke
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