For LD students, content knowledge is merely one aspect of the educational equation. Executive functioning skills—those cognitive processes that facilitate planning, organization, memory, time management, and flexible thinking—usually pose serious challenges that can detract from academic achievement despite a student's intelligence or potential.
Executive functioning impairments often occur concurrently with learning disabilities, with the result that students are not just having difficulty mastering particular academic skills but also metacognitive procedures for the execution of those skills. As an example, a student may comprehend mathematical concepts but be unable to finish assignments because of lack of time management skills or trouble sorting out multi-step problems.
How critical it is to teach these skills cannot be emphasized enough. Studies repeatedly verify that executive functioning skills are better indicators of academic achievement than IQ. LD students need to be explicitly taught these skills since they rarely mature naturally by themselves or simply by teaching content.
Effective tutoring for LD students must extend beyond the presentation of academic content to include intentional executive functioning assistance. But the most important distinction between mediocre and superior tutoring is the manner in which these skills are presented. Telling students about executive functioning strategies or offering generic organizational tools is too little. The most effective method integrates practice into actual coursework.
A good tutor understands that executive functioning is not learned in the abstract but has to be exercised in context. Instead of abstractly teaching planning strategies, they may take a student through deconstructing their real science project into smaller, achievable steps with tangible deadlines. Instead of learning note-taking techniques abstractly, they exercise the skill while working on the student's history reading assignment.
This comprehensive approach has several benefits. First, it gives immediate context, allowing students to grasp why these skills are important to their academic achievement. Second, it provides real-world practice opportunities in familiar settings. Third, it facilitates transfer of skills, solving the typical dilemma where students learn strategies but are unable to use them on their own.
Think about how this could be applied to assignment planning. A good tutor like Chicago Home Tutors does not simply set up a planner system; they sit down with the student examining their actual assignments, demonstrating how to estimate time needs, divide tasks into pieces, and plan work sessions around extracurricular activities. The student repeatedly practices these skills with various assignments until the process is internalized.
For LD students, this repeated guided practice with real academic content creates cognitive bridges between executive functioning strategies and their application. Over time, students develop both the skills and the metacognition to select appropriate strategies for different situations.
Teachers and parents need to seek out such tutors who can grasp this practice-based model. Good tutors offer students structured means of applying executive functioning skills to their real classroom work, both giving feedback on the academic material and the executive processes, and gradually releasing control as students build mastery.
By infusing executive functioning practice into content tutoring, good tutors enable LD students to build the essential mental skills they require not only to succeed on present assignments but to be independent, self-regulated learners for a lifetime.
