Does studying well really mean you have a high IQ?

Many parents believe that smart children will have better academic performance. In fact, intelligence is only one of many potential factors. Today I am sharing 17 years of research experience by an educational psychologist. Perhaps we can learn the secret of why children like to learn. I believe this article can also help parents adjust their educational methods and concepts to help their children grow better. Exploding learning power Peking University Bahuang Heqing course resources: 12 lessons that teach you how to quickly master new knowledge. I work in school psychology in California, USA, and am mainly responsible for the assessment, diagnosis and consultation of educational psychology. Among the more than 1,000 cases in 17 years of work, more than 85% were caused by learning problems due to various reasons. Therefore, I am very honored to have the opportunity to share my observations at work with you today and discuss how to help children develop lifelong learning habits in primary school. When we work in school psychology, the first step is to conduct assessments. When a child has any problems with learning, our first tool is an IQ test. Therefore, when I first started working, I thought I had found the simplest way to predict learning. Because through the two-hour IQ test, I can clearly list the children\’s abilities, which areas are weak and which areas are strong, to the parents. However, I soon discovered that many children had no intellectual problems but had various learning problems in the class. For example, in 2001, I was doing IQ research for a psychology company in my spare time, and I met a 7-year-old girl who was extremely smart. The one-on-one IQ test result was over 140. In other words, less than one child out of a hundred children of the same age will have such a high score. Her parents mentioned that she was often criticized by the teacher for not paying attention in her second-grade class. I immediately asserted: \”She must know everything. What the teacher taught was not attractive to her. She has such a high IQ, skip a grade!\” As a result, my parents were disappointed when they excitedly found the school: \”Why jump? Second grade If you can\’t finish the homework within the stipulated time, you will definitely not be able to keep up when you move to third grade!\” Now that I think about the blind worship of IQ at that time, I feel really ashamed. Later, I discovered more and more that intelligence will help learning, but the results of learning are only one aspect. The effects of learning hardware, such as memory, comprehension, vocabulary, reasoning ability, information processing speed, etc., are easy to see; but the invisible software affects the extent to which the hardware can perform. Over the past fifty or sixty years, educational psychology has been studying what factors have the strongest influence on learning? Of course, there are many potential factors at play here, but based on my own observations, I have summarized the three most important points: the first is the child’s personality; the second is learning attitude; and the third is time management. Behavioral habits. Some parents told me that when their children are six or seven years old, they have already begun to show signs of being tired of studying. This is very abnormal. This stage is when children’s thirst for knowledge and curiosity are the strongest. If they are tired of learning, it must be because the content of learning is very different from the child’s learning ability characteristics. Comparison of traditional education modelsListening comprehension and processing skills are emphasized, but many children need other learning styles. Research from American educational psychology has found that people who are good at using listening to learn (Auditory Learners) account for about 30% of the entire population. And about 65% of people are born with some visual help. For example, when learning geography, you need to draw an image to remember it more clearly. When learning history, you need to draw a time line to help memory through vision. There are also about 5% of people who need to learn through touch and need to do things to achieve the best learning effect. After 17 years of observation, I have found that children do have different abilities and characteristics, and have different requirements for traditional education, which often do not match the expectations of their parents. This requires parents to observe and accept their children more during the upbringing process. Education is about winning with the long side rather than losing with the short side. It is better to spend a lot of effort to teach than to observe carefully and find out the characteristics of the child first. Many parents may have seen the learning pyramid below. This pyramid tells everyone that less than 10% of children will absorb learning in the form of lectures faster, more than 50% of children will absorb and understand faster during discussions with others, and 90% of children will learn through repetition. He will absorb and understand best in the process of teaching others. Therefore, for children who have just started school, you can prepare a whiteboard at home to encourage them to become teachers and teach their families the knowledge they have learned in class. This will not only increase the fun of learning, but also strengthen understanding. One thing that should be mentioned in particular is that a child’s natural temperament characteristic that has a particularly great impact on learning is concentration. Electronic products have a huge impact on attention. There was a study in the United States that followed 2,600 children and found that the time they spent on electronic products at the age of 2 had a negative impact on their self-control and organization abilities at the age of 7. What should we do if a child is born with a short attention span? Here are seven points to remind you: rest on time every day and ensure regular sleep. The sleeping state will directly affect the child\’s concentration. School-age children must ensure 9-10 hours of sleep. Reduce distractions around you and maintain a consistent learning environment. For example, there must be a fixed study table at home. Do your homework on this table every day, and try to minimize other things on the table. Consciously cultivate children\’s observation skills. \”When you went to grandma\’s house today, did you notice any difference in the furniture at grandma\’s house?\” \”Did you see anything different about mom\’s hairstyle, clothes, etc. today?\” Remind the children to observe the things around them, and they will Invisibly improves his concentration. Preview and review, understand some content, and it will be easier to follow the teacher\’s explanation. Especially children in the upper grades of primary school. Teaching methods are diverse. If the child cannot sit still, the homework can be divided into several parts. For example, if there are four pages of homework today, then we can divide it into four parts and we will do one page first. Use some tools to help your child. If the child can only sit down for 5 minutes, then we set a timer for 6 minutes, and when the timer dings, the childYou can stop and take a break to drink some water, take a break and then come back, and slowly extend the timer. Study the content itself. Too easy or too difficult is not conducive to concentration and will affect learning. The best state is the level that children can achieve with a little effort. For example, in reading, children who can read independently mean that 94 out of 100 words can be read accurately. When a child has difficulties in learning, our first assessment is to test how well the child has achieved in reading, mathematics and writing. Are the current homework requirements too difficult? Many times this is the reason why children are tired of studying and have bad study habits. The second thing we want to focus on today is the attitude towards learning, which is the desire for knowledge. Why do children like to study? I have observed many children who like to study because the learning process brings them a sense of accomplishment, and healthy interpersonal relationships are strengthened during learning and interactions with parents and teachers. If these two psychological needs are not met, children will avoid learning. Dr. Carol Dweck, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Stanford, has studied motivation for 35 years. She proposed that the best gift parents can give their children is to teach them to love challenges and be willing to find interesting things. Reasons for mistakes, enjoy the process of hard work, and maintain a strong desire for knowledge. And what kind of \”ideas\” influence children\’s emotions and attitudes when facing difficulties and setbacks? On the one hand, there is the influence of genes, and on the other hand, it comes from the environment. Research by Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology in the United States, shows that children’s attitude towards frustration begins to form around the age of 8. One of the important influencing factors is parents\’ causal analysis of daily life events. If parents explain good things in a long-term, generalized and personal way, such as \”Your communication skills are so good, I am convinced by you!\” etc., children will gradually develop an optimistic way of explanation. If parents\’ explanations for failure are long-lasting, generalized and personal, such as \”You just have a bad memory!\”, \”Girls are not good at math!\”, etc., children will gradually develop a pessimistic way of explanation. Dr. Duac has done a lot of research on this. She repeatedly used this experiment at different ages and found that the final conclusion was the same: if the child\’s efforts in learning are often affirmed and often encouraged, then the child will be more effective when facing difficult tasks. , you are more willing to try and put in more effort. My own children play chess, and this is very obvious in chess. Because a formal chess game lasts six and a half hours. If a child only plays with an eye on the result of winning, these six and a half hours will be very painful. But if your child likes the thinking process of playing chess, they will find these six and a half hours very enjoyable. \”Mindset\” is a book by Dr. Duac. Parents can use it to check whether we have a growth mindset. Specifically, we can test it through the following three aspects: whether we have a growth mindset when we fail or are criticized.Feeling ashamed or wanting to fight back; feeling jealous and losing motivation when seeing others better than oneself; feeling fear when doing something unfamiliar to oneself. These can help parents adjust our own growth mindset and help our children have a growth mindset. The last factor that affects learning is behavioral habits that can be seen on the outside. In particular, time management, sense of responsibility, organization, self-control, etc. are all soft factors that play a key role in learning. For example, some parents asked: \”My child is in the first grade and is procrastinating in doing things, especially homework, which is very slow. I feel that he is under a lot of pressure. As a 7-year-old child, he has been struggling with not wanting to write. I don’t want to write, I wander away, look at the sky, and play with toys in my hands… It takes more than an hour to write a 10-minute homework, and I have no interest in learning. What should I do? Moreover, my child can’t sit still and is always moving around. , In his own words, there is grass growing in his heart and he cannot calm down.\” Later, I asked the parents and found that there is one thing that the children have a particularly high concentration on – Lego. I can’t stick to anything but Lego. Then, the reason is obvious: starting from the first grade of primary school, the requirements for reading and writing are relatively high, and listening comprehension is also a skill that traditional education methods emphasize. However, reading and writing homework does not bring a sense of achievement to the child. On the contrary, it brings him a sense of frustration because he is used to tactile and hands-on learning. In school, he may be unable to complete his homework because he writes slowly, and the teacher may give him some less than positive feedback, which makes the child even more frustrated. If learning itself becomes something that brings him frustration, then he must have no interest in learning and is always distracted. So what should we do with this child? First, let’s look at the child’s abilities and characteristics. He likes hands-on operations and Lego, so we can stimulate his interest in learning based on the things he likes. For example, in terms of reading, can we find some books about Lego? Whether it is a manual or other books, let the children know that reading is a way for them to absorb useful knowledge. They can read more extracurricular books like this. He likes hands-on operations, so is there a teaching method that focuses more on hands-on skills? For example, we told him to finish his homework before 6 o\’clock. After finishing, we should go to Lego class at 6:30. For example, in mathematics, can we use Lego to solve calculation problems? These are all ways to help children become more interested in learning by combining their strengths. Otherwise, a seven-year-old child will already have such study habits at this time. If this continues, he will become more and more avoidant of learning. Secondly, help children develop good behavioral habits. Here are 5 specific suggestions: Give your kids some tools. For example, in terms of memory, learning theory has studied that in the half hour after getting up in the morning and the half hour before going to bed at night, people\’s memory will be about 30% more than usual. Move the things that need to be remembered here. Two times is a very good habit. Use a fixed amount of time to do your homework. Some parents told me that the child only started doing homework after 9 o\’clock.It\’s 12 o\’clock, and it\’s dragging my feet, which affects my sleep. Then my question is, why do children start doing homework at 9 o\’clock when they finish school at 3 o\’clock? This means that behavioral habits have not been developed. There must be a fixed time for homework, especially in elementary school. The suggestion is that when you get home from school, take a break, eat something, and do something different that you like to do. Because in school, most of the learning content is related to reading and mathematical logic. Then make some adjustments, maybe by listening to music, playing ball, or playing with plasticine, to shift the area of ​​brain activity and reduce fatigue. After this, we need to develop the habit of, for example, having a fixed place and a fixed time to do homework before or after eating. House rules for school-age children should be discussed with the children. You can ask your children, do you think we should do math or reading first before eating, and then we can do the other part after eating. In this way, the homework can be separated so that the children do not take too long to do it. For children who are not particularly focused, provide a small reward. For example, if you like to go out to play ball with your dad, then we will do math first. After finishing math, we will go out to play ball with dad for ten minutes, and then come back for dinner. After dinner, we will do other homework. This is good for children. It\’s all a motivation. Develop good work and rest habits at home. When I was in elementary school, I had to go to bed at 10 o\’clock in the evening. If I didn\’t finish my homework before 10 o\’clock, I\’m sorry, we have to turn off the lights. If I can\’t finish my homework the next day, my grades will be affected and I won\’t be able to hand it in. I have to bear this responsibility myself. as a result of. This is a good learning opportunity. The next day, the child will be more attentive and have to finish things before 10 o\’clock. In short, in addition to IQ, there are many \”soft powers\” that affect children\’s performance, and parents also need more learning and exploration.