Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance - U.S. Department of ...

Draft
Program Clusters: A Closer Look
We now take a closer look at each program cluster. For each, we examine the rationale for this
type of program, targeted populations and settings, and some examples. More in-depth case
studies from each category highlight key points.
1. School Readiness Programs That Address Executive Functions
At the preschool and early elementary ages, when children are transitioning to formal schooling,
effortful control and executive functions have been shown to be fundamental psychological
resources that are predictive of long-term success. These skills make it possible for children to
satisfy expectations for self-regulation, impulse control, focusing attention, compliance with
rules, and higher-order thinking that become increasingly necessary in formal schooling. Such
factors have been associated with math and reading competence throughout all school years, and
are likely predictors of success throughout life in career, marriage, and mental and physical
health (Diamond & Lee, 2011).
As highlighted in Chapter 1, in the discussion of the challenges of underserved students in the
United States, deficits in effortful control and executive functions in the early years may be a
significant causal factor in achievement gaps between student populations of high poverty and
their lower-poverty counterparts. High stress and a lack of opportunity to practice these skills can
put high-poverty children at a significant disadvantage during the most critical years for the
development of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that most directly regulates executive
functions. Such deficits can undermine school readiness, manifesting in both learning and
behavioral difficulties that then can have a negative ripple effect throughout the rest of a child’s
schooling.
School readiness programs, especially those targeting high-poverty student populations and
students with learning disabilities such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),
have begun to focus on explicit development of executive functions. Diamond and Lee (2011)
recently published a review in Science of evidence-based approaches for improving executive
functions for children in the early school years. Approaches included the following:
• Training with computer and noncomputer games. Most research has focused on
computerized training in which children play computer games that progressively increase
demand on functions such as working memory and impulse control. Games such as CogMed
(http://www.cogmed.com/) have demonstrated some success in these areas, though findings
suggest that transfer from narrowly focused trained skills to other executive functions was
limited. More research is necessary to examine the generalizability of these findings and
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