When Schools Overlook Introverts

Esther Schindler writes: A few years ago, Susan Cain's book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking seemed to give the world a bit of enlightenment about getting the most out of people who don't think they should have to be social in order to succeed. For a while, at least some folks worked to respect the needs and advantages of introversion, such as careful, reflective thinking based on the solitude that idea-generation requires.

But in When Schools Overlook Introverts, Michael Godsey writes, "The way in which certain instructional trends — education buzzwords like "collaborative learning" and "project-based learning" and "flipped classrooms" — are applied often neglect the needs of introverts. In fact, these trends could mean that classroom environments that embrace extroverted behavior — through dynamic and social learning activities — are being promoted now more than ever." It's a thoughtful article, worth reading. As I think many people on slashdot will agree, Godsley observes, "This growing emphasis in classrooms on group projects and other interactive arrangements can be challenging for introverted students who tend to perform better when they're working independently and in more subdued environments."

Comments

Flipped Classrooms

[XxtraLarGe]

I can see how "collaborative learning" and "project-based learning" might be problematic for introverts, but flipped classrooms might actually be better for them. Although there are several ways that they can be delivered, the most typical model is where students watch instructional material online by themselves, then do their homework in class. It seems to me that this would be an ideal situation for an introvert. No distraction during instruction or anxiety of being called on or asked to the front of the class, etc.

Re:Flipped Classrooms

[AthanasiusKircher]

"Collaborative learning," "project-based learning," any kind of focus on groups or group projects, and so on are often a teaching buzzwords for "Put all the kids in a group so the smart kids can carry the dumb kids and then on paper it looks like everyone is doing well."

That's probably the most cynical way of putting it. A well-organized group project with proper evaluation and assessment can do more than that. Part of the problem is finding suitable types of projects for group work. Projects that are open-ended, exploratory, require experimentation (and often benefit from people with different ideas for approaches) -- group work can be good there.

With younger children -- who haven't yet become so utterly cynical about education and haven't bought into the American malaise of anti-intellectualism -- groups of different ability levels can be incredibly beneficial. It's a common approach in many Montessori and private school classrooms, where grade levels are often combined to everyone's benefit. The younger or slower kids watch the older and smarter kids, and they often have an innate capacity to help each other learn together.

Here is the way a "group project" worked at my old school:

I empathize with your description; I recall many similar situations in school myself. Part of the problem is the cultural divide I mentioned above -- many older kids and teenagers simply don't value excellence in education.

But another major flaw in your description is the lack of an appropriate assessment. "Dumb and mediocre kids" shouldn't get an "A" just because the overall work of a group gets an "A." Learning should be tested via a separate assessment -- whether an individual report or a test on the material learned through the group project or whatever.

Group work shouldn't be a vehicle to give everyone an "A." It's a different learning strategy, which can sometimes be helpful with proper guidance from a teacher. The results of the group should not be substituted for an individual assessment strategy, and if you had teachers who did that, you're probably correct that it wasn't the best method of education.

Re:Flipped Classrooms

[Talderas]

I empathize with your description; I recall many similar situations in school myself.

Fortunately, I was almost always in the advanced classes so group projects involved enough smart kids that it was collaborative rather than one person doing a lot of the work. Group projects were rarer in the few classes without advanced versions where I was foisted in with the general population. The one time that wasn't the case was when I was in drama during my senior year. My class had a number of the students who took part in the theater extracurricular activities as well as those that did not. For our first group project those of us in the extracurricular theater made groups largely because we were all friends with each other the teacher let us do that but warned us that we would only be allowed to do it once and that warning occurred during our extracurricular theater project not during class. Those two group projects were the best of the classes by far. After that we split up into other groups without indication that we had forewarning that we wouldn't be allowed to stay with the same group. Some of the students showed measurable improvement for the second group project and I feel that the two biggest parts of that were having first seen the experienced groups do their project then also the presence of one of the experienced students served to motivate through confidence.

I personally think that everyone has their natural aptitudes defined by their soft skill set that's difficult to judge and measure and this in turn influences how well an individual performs in hard skills. The major issue that I have with group projects in primary and secondary education is that most people haven't yet had enough time to start to understand their own aptitudes. Identifying who can and who cannot can be difficult outside of narrow categories so you can end up with those situations where people with no aptitude for the task at hand being tossed into a group with one person with the aptitude and knowledge.

Re:Flipped Classrooms

[Reapy]

I hear you there. In high school I struggled so much with "How are ya?" As a depressed person living in my head with a huge amount of anxiety, the true answer to that question involved minutes of conversation. Knowing that nobody wanted those minutes still took me several seconds to blast over and discard, then trip and stumble through an answer before landing on something. It took a lot of work to just be able to say "good", even when that wasn't the true answer, or even an appropriate response to the question asked. They are just simply social barks of no meaning.

It was a long time coming before I realize what you said above, that most of the time people aren't in the mood to engage their brains and have a serious discussion right as soon as you meet up, that you have to work up to that kind of thing.

In terms of learning, I've always been of the mind that you have to keep the difficulty proportional to the skill. I game a lot so they are useful analogies for me, but when teaching someone, you can't throw them in against a professional player and expect growth, you have to first teach the person to be average level and familiar before time with excellent players is beneficial in the slightest.

Ironically, middle and high school is probably some of the most treacherous and brutal social situations we all have to go through, and at a time when we are all weakest at doing so. Interacting with most sane adults is generally the best practice before people get thrown to the lions, but that never seems to be the way it goes.

In some ways I wonder that its generally easier to interact with adults because we have all been mostly scarred at one point or another in high school, and thus learn empathy properly, but eh.

Re:Flipped Classrooms

[Solandri]

I'll add that if you were the smart kid put into a group of dumb fucks, then it was intentional. To quote Game of Thrones, "he's grooming you for command." The teacher knew you were the smart kid who wouldn't learn anything from the menial work of the activity itself. So he intentionally put you into a position where you'd have the chance to assume a leadership role and direct others on how to do the work. That way you'd learn something new - how to lead and teach others, project coordination, delegating responsibilities. If your response to the situation was to curl up in a ball and do all the work yourself, then you weren't as smart and creative as you think you are. The teacher handed you an opportunity, and instead of taking advantage of it to figure out a new way to deal with the new situation, you crawled back to your tried and true solution - do everything yourself - even though it was completely inappropriate and non-optimal for the situation.

Re:Both types of learning are important

[RogueyWon]

Few people are fully introverted or extroverted and they shouldn't be encouraged to think of themselves as such. TFA makes a few reasonable points, but I can't help but feel that it is founded upon a false premise. A premise which stems from the way in which people misuse the results of Myers-Briggs and other similar personality-tests.

Running through the article is a belief that people must, in both education and the workplace, be allowed to work in the manner that best fits their personality types. That's not how the world works.

On Myers-Briggs, I show up as a mild-to-moderate introvert. I match some of the descriptors for "introvert" pretty well, but not others. However, what I've always been clear about is that this is not an "excuse" for anything.

Myers-Briggs and the like should be more about enabling the individual being tested to understand how they might need to change their own actions and behaviours to compensate for inbuilt tendencies; not to give them a list of demands for how the world should change to suit them. I found it a fairly useful exercise; I've been able to apply it at work to both play to strengths and compensate for weaknesses. But it's not an excuse.

Back at school, some of my most effective teachers were those who, as I now realise, understood my introvert tendencies and knew how to encourage me to stretch myself beyond what I was comfortable with. We all need that from time to time, especially when we are children. Those on the introverted side need to understand that it's not much use to be able to think if you can't also communicate and work with others. Those on the extroverted side need to be taught that there is a time when you need to sit down, shut up and listen. Most workplaces aren't going to be willing to indulge extreme behaviours on either side.

Group projects and collaborative work are, at best, tools that should be used in only limited roles in the classroom (albeit with wider scope at college level in some subjects). But that's mostly because of the potential for cheating or for some kids to coast by on the efforts of others.

Re:Group work in school

[Kjella]

I remember the teacher let us pick our own groups... once. The three absolutely brightest students in the class and one upper-halfer who would all normally carry a group on their own joined forces, actually doing a quarter of the work each of good quality to begin with, getting good discussion, feedback and QA and some internal competitiveness and finally give the chance to excel meant we delivered a group project that was A+++. Meanwhile, many other groups who were used to at least having one useful team member were suddenly stuck with all slackers and less than gifted pupils. If it was merely graded it might not have been so bad but it also involved presentations in class, where it became painfully obvious to everyone how big the differences were. That never, ever happened again.

Re:Social media

[Kjella]

I don't really see SNS as anything new, and your characterization of them seems the opposite of what actually happens to me. People with few friends have actual, real friends on SNS. People with 10,000 "friends" and 20 million "likes" are actually quite isolated and distant from those people, and crave real life interaction all the more for it.

Sorry, but that doesn't jive with the social media addicts I know. Most of them are the kind that are doing social things all the time and still can't get enough because they can't be everywhere with everybody all the time, so social media is their way of pseudo-staying in contact with an oversized social circle. Like you're on a cabin trip with friends A and B so you couldn't go partying with friends C and D or be at family member E's celebration or colleague F's birthday party but through insta-face-twitter you're trying to take part in everything and let everyone take part in what you're doing anyway.

Lets face it..

[fluffernutter]

Unless an introvert is absolutely brilliant they will be ignored. This world totally caters to people who can't stop talking about themselves. That's just the way it is.

Re:Social media

[gstoddart]

Not really, it assumes you give a damn.

I can't tell you how many stupid platforms I've been subjected to at work which seem to labor under the bullshit premise that my work, or anybody else's, is going to be improved by "teh soshul medias".

All those things with badges for participation and the like? I hate these things in real life, and I despise them in my work life. It propagates the stupid belief that by adding more volume of pointless content and getting recognized as a "good contributor" that it generates anything of value.

Introversion means you simply don't want 500 Facebook friends, don't see the structure of "social media" as enhancing anything, and actively want no part of it.

Somewhere along the line when companies started using this cap internally as if it was going to save the corporate culture and make us all more productive, they lost the plot. So now you have a bunch of magpies who use it because it's cool and fun, and a bunch of people who can't find anything useful because it's crammed full of inane garbage and notifications that someone liked someone else's post.

I'm not looking for "cool and fun", I'm looking for information to do my job. And I don't want it structured in such a way as to require me to sift through a bunch of "workversations" to find the useful bits among the rubbish. The signal to noise ratio renders the platform largely useless.

If this crap in the workplace feels useless and distracting, I can only imagine that in an educational setting it leaves a lot of kids thinking "why would I do this, how does it help me, and why am I being forced to use this crap?"

Social media is rewarding if you want to be constantly validated as participating in a group and have a video-game level of "accomplishments", and it's utterly useless if you don't. It just ads a layer of pointless crap which has nothing to do with what you're trying to do ... but it satisfies some clueless halfwit who saw a seminar which said that social media would make everything better.

Give me the tools to do my damned job, and don't impose some framework where I have to pretend to want to have a social conversation to extract every single piece of information. Because it makes for terribly organized information which is less useful the more stuff is around it.

Other than making some people feel better about things, I'm not convinced social media helps you accomplish a damned thing.

I sincerely hope the trend that everything is social media ends soon -- because it's annoying as hell, and in my experience, not substantiated in terms of what it actually accomplishes.