Transcriber: Mohand Habchi Reviewer: Reiko Bovee
Thank you.
In the small but worldwide communities of the Jungian type,
I'm enough of an expert that I get to write books
and speak at a lot of conferences.
And in my formal life, as a financial analyst
I got to use math everyday.
For about the last 15 years I've combined all of that
helping as many teachers as possible
meet the needs of more students in their classroom.
So what's Jungian type?
How many of you have taken the MBTI, the Myers-Briggs?
In most rooms, most people have.
Some even remember their four letter code.
A few of those remember what it means,
and even fewer had the chance to apply the concepts.
I have been studying it for 20 years.
It's a rich theory of human development and interaction,
and every year, we find new insights and applications.
My most recent research has involved--
studying students doing math.
We filmed about 100 students, all doing the same math fractions task,
look for patterns in what they did,
and saw whether they had any correlations with their psychological types.
Meanwhile, my good colleague, Dr. Dario Nardi at UCLA,
was hooking students up to EEGs
and running them through all kinds of tests,
and looking for the same kind of patterns.
And I can say with confidence that Jung was right.
There are eight kinds of brains, evidence for the 16 types,
but what's more important to us today
is that the insights and images we got from that research,
really help teachers understand
the very different needs of students who don't learn like them.
What does it mean when we actually put it into practice?
Well, just to start, I'll give you a little tidbit.
I was running an intervention
for some very active, very discouraged sixth-graders.
And part way through the intervention
one of the girls looked at the clock and said,
"Oh my gosh, we've been doing math for three hours and understanding it."
That's what we need, that kind of engagements,
if we're going to move kids to where they really get going in math.
So before we dig into the research, what is the Jungian type?
It's a framework for understanding normal differences in normal individuals
- Whoops! We need to back up! -
how they gain energy, how they gain information,
how they make decisions, and how they approach work and life.
I saw the biggest differences in energy and information
looking at the math research.
So that's what we'll spend most of our time today.
But the way we do these things are preferences.
Just like we're right or left-handed, we have these psychological preferences.
But we can use both.
No good basketball coach is going to let you just dribble with one hand.
You are going to learn to use both, and shoot with both hands.
And in school, students really need to learn to use
all the psychological preferences.
But we' ll be looking at students who aren't getting it,
and looking at what happens
when we give them a little boost in their own psychological preferences.
So, to get at this idea of energy
which has been all over Time Magazine and Scientific American,
everything else this week,
I guess they haven't been listening to us for the last 80 years.
We split kids into two groups, we teach them about type then say,
"If you think you're extroverted, go to one side,
if you think you're introverted go to the other,
and draw your ideal classroom."
- Whoops! It's jumping ahead on me. -
There we go. So, the extroverts:
those circles are chairs with springs on the bottom,
so they can bounce their energy out.
The green squiggly line is the maze they can run through and find candy;
they weren't in the healthy schools.
There's a Burger King, a boogie baby dance floor,
a track, a swimming pool, a football field, a basketball court.
You get the idea? Energy through action and interaction.
Meanwhile, an introverted group called me over and said:
"Don't we each get our own sheet of paper?"
I said, "Deal with it."
So, they each drew their own classrooms in a corner of the page:
spacious, calm, energy through solitude and reflection.
Of course, most classrooms have both extroverted and introverted students,
and a teacher who needs to be energized.
This theory helps them figure out what each other's needs are
and then negotiate so that everybody has energy.
Second pair of preferences we're going to look at this morning
are sensing and intuition.
People who prefer sensing get their information first through reality,
but their five senses can tell them, and through experience.
Those who prefer intuition,
get their information through hunches, connections, and analogies.
So what differences does this make in math?
Well, in the 100 students I filmed
not one sensing student used the numbers to solve any of the fractions tasks;
not even the one who had the highest math score in the whole school.
They drew pictures; used manipulatives.
Sometimes they'd say,
"My pictures are right, but I don't think the math will work,"
and checked with numbers.
Intuitives, they used numbers whether they knew what they're doing or not:
adding, subtracting, calculating.
Sometimes they'd say, "I know the math is right,
but I don't think my picture will work when I draw it.
And sometimes it didn't.
They use the wrong color tiles,
none of the sensing type made that mistake, using the wrong colors.
Sometimes, they'd be talking about 12 when they only had 10 tiles out.
They really don't see reality all the time.
Even more important, was their need for feedback.
Two thirds of the sensing kids asked permission to use the materials.
Even though we put everything out
- the paper, the tiles, the markers - and said, "This is all for you,"
not a big deal; over half of them asked permission
to try the problems in a certain way,
saying things like, "Can I use six tiles? Is it OK if I draw a rectangle?"
They didn't want to proceed
unless they were sure they were on track with what the facilitator wanted.
The more insecure they were in the math skills,
the less likely they were to go forward
without knowing they were on the wrong track.
Extroverted intuitives assumed permission.
They said, "I can use this, right? I can do it this way, right?"
Not one introverted intuitive asked permission to do anything.
That's my preferences. My parents would not be surprised at that.
So already we've got three big differences:
they make different kinds of mistakes; they need different kinds of feedback,
and they have a different affinity
for concrete versus abstract world of numbers.
Before I show you some of the results from the film,
I want to just introduce Dario's brain lab.
He works at UCLA; he's been hooking college students up to EEG caps.
Having them in the lab for 2 to 3 hours,
just a 15 minutes shot doesn't show the overall patterns.
He has them do math problems,
but also wordplays, role-playing, juggling.
He tried speed dating,
but that turned out to be related to hormones and not the type.
(Laughter)
And he saw the same big patterns in the brain that I did.
And by the way, we both assessed type
by doing lengthy teaching to the students
about what these concepts mean, giving them experiences,
so it's not just a paper and pencil assessment; it's a verified type.
Dario was taking the patterns he saw on the filming,
and overlaying them against these 16 regions of the brain
that are well documented in neuroscience.
And I won't be talking about all of these today.
I am going to be looking at the macro state
that he saw on the brains.
But when you look at these regions, the 16 types actually use different ones.
When we're listening, when we're using a math problem,
when we're doing math problems, when we reason,
there're only two types that actually use the logic center.
The rest of us fake it if you haven't noticed it in the past.
We can all learn to use it,
and in fact you'll see variations based on education and culture,
but there're phenomenal correlations between type and how we use our brain.
So let's see what this looks like with one of the students.
A sixth-grader, about a year behind in math, was asked to make a shape
that was a quarter red and three quarters yellow.
And here's his first attempt.
If he'd kept going he would've done 8ths. Right?
But he went back and he read the problem and said,
"Oh, now I'm starting to get it."
He drew this because the example that he saw used 8ths.
He was using the reality of the example to try to make sense of things.
So he put the sheet over, and he drew this one.
Then he read the problem again and said,
"Now I got it. I need another piece of paper."
And he drew this one.
I called it "Purposeful trial and error."
He made something; he read the abstract words and numerals again,
he made something else, going back and forth until he understood it.
He didn't need help; he just needed time. Here's what his brain looks like.
You can see there's just a little color in each square
that almost looks black on each region,
and the right shows the neocortex activity;
just slightly on in each version of the brain.
Dario calls this the tennis hop.
You know how players stand ready to go in any direction;
that's what their brains are doing,
waiting for something to happen so that they can react to it.
He was drawing things to make something happen.
Two things: when I show the whole film in workshops, usually a teacher will say,
"How many of you wanted to help him after he made the second mistake?"
saying, 'Oh honey. You know, let's not get discouraged here."
And he didn't need help; he just needed time.
Once another teacher said,
"We don't have time for kids to try three times."
To which another teacher replied,
"So we don't have time for these kids to learn."
And there's some truth in that.
In the research we have,
these students are over-represented in our alternative schools.
Regular school doesn't work for them.
There're also underrepresented teachers,
so their voices are missing from these educational conversations.
One other thing: you think a child like this who needs action
would use the tiles instead of drawing.
I asked him out in the hall and he said, "Well, only dummies used the tiles.
Our teachers tell us not to unless we have to."
When we rush students from the concrete to the pictorial, to the abstract,
here's something to keep in mind.
In Dario's brain lab, these kids showed more brain activity
when they were looking out the window
than when they were doing the math task sitting down.
If you really want to get them active in learning,
give them manipulatives that they can use while standing up.
I was helping out in the classroom,
and some of these kids were zoning out, working at their seats,
using these little strips of fraction paper, so I said,
"Why don't you come up to the front?"
And we've got these huge magnetic strips and we worked together.
Guess what? Can you say engagement?
The teacher couldn't believe their high level of math conversations,
once they could move around,
"No it's three fourths. Move that there." It was great.
Intuitives don't need manipulatives as much.
As my son put it, "What do I have to move around slices of pizza
when I can see the fractions in my head?"
Here's an example where pictures didn't work for an intuitive.
The sensing teacher had drawn these two to help the students see
why sevenths are smaller than fourths, even though seven is the biggest number.
The kids said, "It doesn't help at all."
And the teacher started to draw another model
while the students started calculating.
And in a little bit, she raised her hand and said,
"OK. I calculated it common denominator: 28.
1/4 would be 7/28. 1/7 would be 4/28.
That makes sense."
Sensing types trust reality. Intuitives trust the abstract concepts.
When kids don't get it, we need to provide both.
Here's another holistic pattern.
What Dario calls it "The Christmas Tree," of extroverted intuition.
When they're brainstorming, every piece of the brain
starts firing asynchronously, trans-contextual thinking.
They need lots of ideas; you can see how much activity there is
in each region of the brain as they do this.
I remember one girl during the filming trying to make a shape
that was a quarter red and three-quarters yellow.
She's talking about 25, 50, 75 dollars.
"Wait, we could use percentages; that would be 25% or 50%.
It's like a foursquare court."
Finally, all of the sudden she made a connection
and made the correct shape.
They need nonlinear methods of doing these things.
Procedures can actually be a disaster
if they don't have some of these things to hook on to.
Here's what other papers look like.
Up at the top here, you can see that she finally got the right answer
although she had to scratch out a yellow one.
She was not paying close attention to what she was counting.
Then she did all of this,
trying to make a bigger shape with more squares
that was still a quarter red and three-quarters yellow.
She tried adding, she tried multiplying, she tried 16th,
and all of the sudden, it dawned on her that all she had to do
was add on to the other shape proportionally.
Then, when she started doing the next problem,
which involved thirds and sixths, she did this whole bit appear
making the bigger shape as well in less than 30 seconds.
She made the connection from the fourth to the sixth and was ready to go.
The sensing kids didn't want to make that leap.
It was if they were telling us,
"Well, I get that it works with fourths.
You can tell me I can just double it with sixths and get the same answer.
Show me how to do it again."
Intuitives trust their leaps; it doesn't mean that they're smarter.
As a matter of fact, if they leap in the wrong direction,
it's really difficult to break into that Christmas tree brainstorming
and get them back on track.
But we often see it as smart, right? Here's the third pattern.
All of us get this when we're in flow,
but introverted intuitives get into flow when they're doing novel tasks.
It's Dario's and my brain pattern,
and we joke that this means that we think we're experts at everything.
Sorry about that, but what's going on is our whole brain go blank,
and I think an answer will pop if I just relax everything.
And if we've got enough background information,
the answer really does pop.
They need a blackout of external stimulation;
too much going on and they can't do this, and they need lots of novel problems.
As a matter fact, the more they're to practice the same thing,
a lot of time the worst they get; not better; it's just too boring.
Here's what I mean by blacking out external stimulation.
These films are boring to watch.
They just sit there staring at the problem or at the paper for 5 to 10 minutes;
they may be counting little bit, and all of the sudden they go,
"Oh, oh. I get it," and they write down an answer.
I was watching this with another math coach who said,
"Where did that come from?
She couldn't figure that out on her own."
Yes she could; they just need the time, and there's no known to figure it out.
One of other big patterns, I can't show you a clear slide like that
because the introverted sensing students, their brains reflect how they practiced.
They actually love practicing
and they seem to burn their neural pathways
in whatever their expertise is.
So whether they're violinists or they're mechanics or math students,
you can see how they learned it through the paths that they burned,
very different from the most of the other types.
And I saw this in an intervention.
For example one time
we had students rolling dice with fractions printed on the side.
And the fractions that they came up rolled,
they were to write down on a whiteboard and then add them together.
Just a different way of practicing.
Two introverted sensing girls rolled and rolled,
maybe 30 problems all correct until I said,
"Do you think you've got this?
Should we move on to something else?"
Meanwhile, there was an introverted intuitive boy in the room.
I checked his five mandatory problems; he got them all wrong.
I knew this child pretty well and I said,
"I think you know how to do this and thought it was a stupid assignment.
I need to see five correct, and then I've got way more interesting tasks."
Sure enough I came back over; he had five right.
He engaged in the next level of tasks so intensely,
that I let him teach the other girls how to do it.
They all had a great time.
I've been in schools where nearly all the math teachers preferred
introversion and sensing, and firmly believe
that the way students would master math was through practice.
And that's true for students like them.
Other students need the tennis hop of activities,
or the Christmas tree of all the different things going on
so they can make those connections,
the blues where almost nothing happening so that something can pop to the top.
There's more brain patterns but obviously we're on limited time.
so I want to finish with this story.
At the end of the fractions,
when we're doing this filming project, the teachers gave an assessment
to see which of the major fractions concepts these students have mastered.
The columns show whether they got each concept right or wrong
on the assessment,
and then the colors show how much knowledge overall they'd gained.
So the green kids were good to get to go and then the other colors
showed varying levels of intervention needed.
One of the teachers said, "All right we know their types.
What if just this once we broke them up for intervention
by both type and level of knowledge?
Would it make a difference?"
And it did.
This teacher said it was the highlight of his teaching career.
He had a group of sensing students and a group intuitive students.
The intuitive students worked for three days
on this concept of going from improper fractions
to mixed numbers and back again - it was one of the state standards -
doing all kinds of activities and on the third day they got it.
They came back in the next day, the teacher said,
"You want to do more?" and they said,
"We could do this in our sleep. We're done. Let's do something else."
Sensing group: four days to master the concepts,
really about the same level of ability,
but everyday after that, when they came into the intervention class, they asked,
"Can we do more problems? Can we write them for each other?"
They even taught the principal how to go from mixed numbers to improper fractions,
and even more important,
they started coming to regular math class on time,
sitting up front, pencil sharpened, asking questions.
The teacher said, "What if someone had stuck with them like that
on a concept back in first grade? Where would they be now?"
The highlight of his teaching career.
You see those sheep up to the top of the hill?
I had just climbed a similar hill and believe me, it's really hard,
specially after a rainstorm, even harder than it looks.
So I turned to my colleagues and said, "Why did those sheep climb up
to the top of the hill? What's the incentive for them?"
And he told me that as far as they know
they simply like the taste of the grass better.
Our students have those same kinds of inborn preferences,
and how they tackle learning.
And when they don't get it,
we have to help them tackle it in their own way.
I can say with confidence
that Jungian type is a research-based useful framework
that helps us to do just that.
Thank you.
(Applause)