The team at the Center for Curriculum Redesign have released an excellent read that looks at the complex concept of executive functions (EFs) and their crucial role in learning. The paper seeks to clarify the current splurge of research in EF, and proposes a user friendly framework that defines EFs as “Attention-Regulation Skills” comprising:

• Inhibition
• Working Memory
• Cognitive Flexibility 

The authors dig into how these EFs develop across a lifespan, their plasticity, and the effectiveness of training interventions, noting that while EFs are highly heritable, they are influenced by environmental and cultural factors. The document concludes by highlighting what we’d describe as high level principles (rather than practical implementation guidance) for education, particularly regarding optimising learning environments to minimise distractions and managing cognitive load in the context of increasing digital device use. The framework is, in our view, really solid, and well worth a read if you are trying to make sense of all the exec function research out there.