Sternberg, Robert J. & Subotnik, Rena F. (Eds.) (2006). Optimizing student success in school with the other three Rs: Reasoning, resilience, and responsibility. Reviewed by Elizabeth Smith Alexander, University of Texas at Austin

Sternberg, Robert J. & Subotnik, Rena F. (Eds.) (2006). Optimizing student success in school with the other three Rs: Reasoning, resilience, and responsibility. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc. pp. 265 $65     ISBN 1-59311-431-1 $35     ISBN 1-59311-430-3 Reviewed by Elizabeth Smith Alexander University of Texas at Austin October 12, 2006 For those of us long irritated by the fact that two of the traditional “3 Rs” (writing and arithmetic) do not actually begin with the letter “R,” it is good to see that co-editors Sternberg and Subotnik have identified three categories of skills – reasoning, resilience, and responsibility - that not only meet that criteria, but which also appear to hold great promise for enhancing student achievement in the 21st century. Indeed, in their Introduction, Subotnik and White point to the other 3 Rs (TOTR) as helping to create “an atmosphere in schools more conducive for learning” (p. 1) and to developing the skills now recognized as vital to success in the areas of employment, community engagement, and interpersonal relations. Given the disparity that continues to exist between the achievement of students coming from different social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds, the purpose of this book is to present TOTR as way to “promote achievement and the realization of full academic potential, especially for students who are labeled as underperformers” (p. 2). The authors argue that, despite the detrimental effects of a poverty-stricken, unstable home life, school attributes including teacher quality, class size, and anti-academic peer influences, many psychological characteristics can and do offset these issues, producing academically successful and productive members of society. Indeed, in terms of the expectations found to be associated with high levels of academic achievement, they say that exposing students to an integrated model of TOTR helps them develop a sense of what is possible. Subotnik and White’s Introduction thankfully does not assume readers know what is meant by the three themes of reasoning, resilience, and responsibility and so defines these terms in ways that are both clear and supported by the literature. Reasoning, they state, “is the ability to draw conclusions from evidence, and often entails the use of metacognitive strategies, or internal dialogue and self-monitoring activities, to improve learning” (p. 6). Demonstrating the complementary relationship between all three of these new 3 Rs—and the way that outcomes appear to be particularly enhanced when these themes are introduced synergistically rather than separately--Subotnik and White refer to Werner and Smith’s (2001) seminal longitudinal study of resilience among children on the island of Kauai as providing evidence of the importance of particular reasoning abilities for long-term success in life. The authors then go on to outline what is meant by resilience. Although variously defined, arguably the most concise articulation of resilience is that of “normal development under difficult conditions” (Fonagy, Steele, Steele, Higgitt, & Target, 1994). Subotnik and White distinguish between this and educational resilience, which concerns “a child’s ability to achieve academic and social success in the classroom despite early and ongoing personal vulnerabilities and adversities” (p. 7). With respect to the third theme of responsibility, the authors offer a general definition as “being accountable for one’s actions and inactions” (p. 7) and how that is further framed in terms of personal responsibility, civic responsibility, and academic responsibility. In the next introductory chapter, co-editor Sternberg re-defines each of TOTR in terms of his earlier theory of higher mental processes, which produced a different acronym—WICS--for wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized (Sternberg, 2003). Reasoning, he argues, extends beyond the ability to engage in the inductive and deductive analyses against which one’s IQ is assessed, echoing the recent focus on multiple intelligences posited by Gardner (1983). With respect to resilience, Sternberg lists eleven intra- and inter-personal “skills” (p. 27) that he believes resilient individuals need in order to creatively and meaningfully contribute to society. Some of these are consistently mentioned in the resilience literature, including self-efficacy (Rutter, 1999; Wolff, 1995), social abilities (Fonagy et al., 1994), and problem-solving skills (Fergus & Zimmerman, 2005). Other skills, such as being able to market ideas successfully to oneself and others, and finding work that one is passionate about, arguably fit more with creativity theories (see The Handbook of Creativity, for a review) than with what appears to have come out of the resilience literature. That said, Tusaie and Dyer (2004) do cite creativity as being one of the cognitive factors that has been linked with resilience. Not being aware of much research linking these concepts, however, it occurs to me that this might be a fertile avenue for researchers to further explore. Concerning the third theme of responsibility, Sternberg regards this to be closely associated with wisdom, defined in his WICS theory as “the application of intelligence, creativity, and knowledge for a common good” (p. 32). He then goes on to outline five “fallacies” – unrealistic optimism, egocentrism, omniscience, omnipotence, and invulnerability—that contribute to the “irresponsibility of the kind that has brought down so many corporations, governments, and for that matter, families” (p. 35). Certainly this perspective dovetails with the “individual sense of morality” (p. 7) that Subotnik and White identified as being pertinent to the theme of personal responsibility. Rena F. Subotnik Having set the stage and defined the terms, the editors draw upon the knowledge and expertise of many academics whose names will be familiar to those of us regularly exposed to psychological and educational research, including: Carol Dweck, Jacquelynne Eccles, Richard Mayer, and Barry Zimmerman. These perspectives are complemented by those of other influential educationalists and practitioners, including Tom Luce from the US Department of Education, and Gregory White, Executive Director of the National Academy of Education. Indeed, Good and Dweck’s article--which looks at the epistemological issues concerning intelligence and how having an entity (fixed) or incremental (malleable) self-theory influences the nature of students’ learning goals and hence their academic motivation generally—is a good example of the blend of theory and practice found throughout this book. Following these three introductory chapters, the book is organized into five parts, the first three focusing on each of the key themes of reasoning (Part I), resilience (Part II), and responsibility (Part III). Part IV outlines TOTR model and how teachers might incorporate reasoning, resilience, and responsibility, into the school curriculum, and Part V summarizes the arguments presented, and the implications for the way learning environments are designed, research is conducted, and policy is set. An overview of each Part now follows. Part I: Special Focus on Reasoning Two of the three articles in this section focus on the specific issue of mathematical reasoning. The heart of cognitive scientist, Richard Mayer’s, argument is that poor mathematical understanding may be less an issue of gender, class, or ethnicity, and more to do with the way this subject is taught in schools. The current over-emphasis on procedural knowledge (the “how to” part) frequently comes at the expense of four other important types of knowledge, which Mayer identifies as factual, conceptual, strategic, and attitudinal knowledge. Mayer does a fine job of organizing his argument, peppering the text with examples of the kinds of mathematical problems that students frequently find taxing in order to walk the reader through the steps which, if not correctly addressed, tend to erect barriers to learning. He supports his assertion that once you get rid of the obstacles to the development of the five different kinds of knowledge, one’s skill at mathematics can flourish. Mayer copious describes relevant studies, and discusses the implications of these findings for the teaching of mathematics. In reading Mayer’s chapter I was particularly reminded of the issue with some of Swiss development theorist, Jean Piaget’s, problem situations that involved mountains and perspective taking. I seem to recall that researchers trying, unsuccessfully, to replicate some of Piaget’s findings soon discovered where the problem lay. Whereas these kinds of problems were immediately understandable to Swiss youngsters, they presented a greater challenge to children who had not been previously exposed to the presumed factual and conceptual knowledge that facilitated finding solutions. In the second article of Part I, Nunes, an Oxford professor of Educational Studies, begins by outlining the disadvantages that deaf students face when presented with mathematical problem-solving that does not take into account their different information-processing preferences. Not surprisingly, Nunes points out, when an individual lacks the ability to hear, their sight tends to become more highly developed in compensation. However, designing curricula that capitalizes on these visual assets is too often ignored by educators. The author then goes on to demonstrate how, if the demands of the task emphasize visual-spatial abilities rather than serial recall, deaf children can often surpass the achievements of hearing children in mathematical reasoning abilities. The second part of this article is then devoted to describing a program, which Nunes co-developed and is aimed at students aged 7-11 years, that has produced heartening results in terms of demonstrating deaf children’s capacity for mathematical problem-solving, given appropriate scaffolding. The heart of Luce and Thompson’s message in the third chapter of this section concerns the importance of identifying, measuring, and comparing tangible outcomes across the school curriculum. A large part of their thesis is taken up with outlining a 6-step data analysis methodology, the Just for the Kids (JFTK) approach, that has been subjected to “a 4-year best practice study of hundreds of school systems located across the country” (p. 104). Such results should, these authors argue, demonstrate the value of assessing individual students in context, and comparing those results over their entire school career, rather than in isolated points of time as tends to occur currently. I did wonder, however, whether this emphasis on student performance data--which appears to focus solely on standardized testing—was really in keeping with the spirit of Sternberg’s earlier message about celebrating all forms of intelligence, not just those that are amenable to quantitative data. Part II: Resilience The first of the two articles in this section offers a clear review of the risk and protective factors that have been implicated in an individual’s level of resilience. Applied psychologists Walsh and Brabeck then go on to describe the “Boston Connects” program, which seeks to “promote psychosocial resilience by addressing the nonacademic barriers to learning” (p. 127) across 10 urban elementary schools in the Boston area. Again, readers looking for concrete ways to integrate TOTR into their curriculum should find the clearly-stated components of the program, the long-term outcomes expected from it, and the graphic representations of data that has already been analyzed, to be helpful. The authors of the second chapter in Part II of this book also assist the reader (familiar with studies on resilience, or otherwise) by condensing the results of many journal articles on resilience into four major obstacles to academic achievement, three of which are environmental or social, namely: various kinds of resource capital (e.g., financial, institutional, pedagogical); opportunities to learn; quality of teachers and teaching. The fourth obstacle, which is intrapersonal, concerns the attitudes and behaviors of students to learning. This emphasis on the social context, rather than simply intrapersonal characteristics, is certainly representative of research findings (Rutter, 1993), particularly with respect to family support (Fergus & Zimmerman, 2005). What is refreshing, particularly for those of who are already immersed in the resilience literature, is Gordon and Mejia’s emphasis on the defiant aspect of resilience. This echoes Sternberg’s earlier assertion that resilient individuals don’t just survive, they help to shape their environments so that they are more supportive. Again, in keeping with the practical focus of this book, the reader is clearly presented with the factors found to be common to “defiers,” and thought to contribute to academic achievement. Part III: Responsibility Anyone familiar with Barry Zimmerman’s and Jacquelynne Eccles’ work will not be surprised to discover that the former focuses his article on the issue of student responsibility in terms of self-regulation, whereas the latter makes her contribution to this book with respect to expectancy-value models of motivation. First, Zimmerman uses the example of the Montessori approach, where freedom to express themselves is tied to students being held accountable for the results of their actions or inactions, to explicate the role of attributions in making personal responsibility judgments. For example, it is through exposure to the effects of their choices that individuals come to make judgments as to whether they or others are responsible for those outcomes, whether they will tend to credit their effort or ability, and the extent to which they feel in control of affecting those outcomes. The author goes on to outline the three phases of self-regulation (forethought, performance, and self-reflection), and then discusses “whether instruction in self-regulatory processes can directly lead to improvements in students’ attributions of personal responsibility, especially for unfavorable outcomes” (p. 192). He ends this chapter, as he started, with a reference to Montessori and as clear an explication of personal responsibility in an academic setting as you are likely to find. This concerns Maria Montessori’s response to the question about what a teacher, who has come to understand the importance of preparing students to take appropriate responsibility for their learning, would consider their greatest sign of success. Her reply, reports Zimmerman, was: “The children are now working as if I did not exist.” That of course begs the question of how many educators—and what kind of individuals—would have the self-confidence to not only say that, but be comfortable with what it means. Finally, in this part of the book, Eccles emphasizes that part of expectancy-value models that is typically less well researched—identified by Eccles and her colleagues as subjective task value (STV). The author argues convincingly that whereas expectations for success are important to learning, and have been demonstrated so in copious studies, we should not ignore the vital role that wanting to engage in an academic task also plays. She then goes on to outline the specific roles that different kinds of value can contribute to the level of responsibility acknowledged by students, such as intrinsic value (doing something for its own sake or reward), and utility value (the perceived usefulness of a task in terms of an individual’s personal plans or goals), and concludes by mentioning the effect that perceived cost has on an individual’s level of academic motivation. Part IV: Model, and Part V: Summary Exponents of good communication skills frequently advise us to: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, state your message, then conclude by telling them what you just told them.” The last two chapters of this book largely fall under the “Tell them what you just told them” category, but are no less essential and interesting for that. The co-authors of the penultimate chapter clearly reiterate how and why the other 3 Rs model was formulated, what it means to use reasoning, be resilient, and take responsibility, and how these three themes–within an integrated model—can help students with many kinds of problem-solving. Susan Goldman follows this up in her concluding chapter by stressing the importance of focusing on these three themes in more complex societies where the traditional three Rs (reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic) are necessary but no longer sufficient, and must be accompanied by critical thinking, problem-solving, and evaluative skills. In keeping with the summary purpose of this chapter, the author discusses the various theoretical and empirical perspectives offered in the earlier chapters, and their implications for research and policy. In conclusion, I would say that this book is a pleasurable, easy read, offering clearly articulated theories and well-explained practical applications pertinent to the themes of reasoning, resilience, and responsibility. In the main, my criticisms are minor and some may be considered idiosyncratic. For example, I have a personal issue with books that have no index, and in this instance it made it much harder for me to identify a single topic of interest and review how it was dealt with by the different authors. Maybe it was a matter of cost, but an index would have enhanced the usability of this book. Also, I was disappointed to see Walsh and Brabeck suddenly introduce the word resiliency, as if it were interchangeable with resilience. On the contrary, some researchers have argued that the former term is suggestive of a trait or quality that is always present in an individual, whereas evidence tends to show that resilience is not a trait, but a process that some people go through in the presence of risk (Fergus & Zimmerman, 2005). Continuing with the theme of risk, this was one issue I was puzzled about in Robert Sternberg’s thought-provoking chapter, where he linked resilience with creativity. I remain unconvinced by the inclusion of some of the items on his list of resilience skills, including the “willingness to take sensible risks” (p. 30). As Rutter (1993) has articulated, “resilience does not usually reside in the avoidance of risk experiences” (p. 627). That said, I’m not sure that I would necessarily infer—as Sternberg has—that resilient individuals are therefore willing to take sensible risks, just that facing risk is a sine qua non for the development of resilience. Unfortunately it was not possible to review the evidence upon which Sternberg made his postulation, given that this part of his chapter is somewhat lacking in citations. Those references that were included, such as the one pertaining to resilient individuals’ skill of “finding what one loves to do” (p. 31) seemed to be related more to the creativity covered by his earlier WICS model, than to the resilience component of TOTR. Overall, however, this was a very enjoyable book not least because it is a good example of how theory can inform practice, and vice versa. In particular, as an educational psychologist, I found the clear explanations of important theories related to self-regulation, motivation, and learning generally, to be useful summaries of our current knowledge, and hence this work will be one I will want to keep on my bookshelf. In terms of its wider relevance, however, one can only hope that this inspiring collection of articles will prompt teachers, administrators, and policymakers to consider applying some of the best practices thus outlined, in order to expose more of our young people to the life-enhancing skills of reasoning, resilience, and responsibility. References Fergus, S., & Zimmerman, M.A. (2005). Adolescent resilience: A framework for understanding healthy development in the face of risk. Annual Review of Public Health, 26, 399-419. Fonagy, P., Steele, M., Steele, H., Higgitt, A., & Target, M. (1994). The Emanuel Miller Memorial Lecture 1992: The theory and practice of resilience. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 35(2), 231-257. Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Rutter, M. (1993). Resilience: Some conceptual considerations. Journal of Adolescent Health, 14, 626-631. Rutter, M. (1999). Resilience concepts and findings: implications for family therapy. Journal of Family Therapy, 21, 119-144. Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.). (1999). Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R.J. (2003). Wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tusaie, K., & Dyer, J. (2004). Resilience: A historical review of the construct. Holistic Nursing Practic, 18(1), 3-10. Wolff, S. (1995). The concept of resilience. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 29, 565-574. About the reviewer Elizabeth Smith Alexander is a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Psychology, at The University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation will offer a psycholinguistic study of the positive psychology construct of hope. Elizabeth is currently investigating folk models of hope and whether an individual’s level of hope might be more accurately measured through analyzing their written and spoken words in uncertain situations, rather than with self-report instruments that measure generalized tendencies. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.