Why It Matters

The pressure of mastery for academic skills sometimes pushes teachers to focus on transferring information at a quick pace, rather than taking the time to fully immerse students in the journey of learning, allowing them to grapple with ideas, sort through ambiguities, and deal with complexities (16).  What gets lost is the opportunity for deep learning and rich understanding of the material—the very things needed for long-term retention and robust transfer (15).

In a study comparing American and Japanese teachers, researchers found that American teachers tended to demonstrate solutions to mathematical problems, whereas Japanese teachers allowed students to grapple with the problems and allowed time for solutions to be developed (9, 24).  When teachers—whether in America, Australia, or any other country—demonstrate solutions or “proceduralize” learning, they take away the challenge of problems, consequently converting problem-solving tasks into mere exercises in which students apply procedures/rules to a problem without the cognitive challenge that leads to deep learning (2, 4, 16).  In fact, evidence shows that teachers’ tendency to reduce the challenge of tasks in order to make tasks more manageable for students  is common practice (2, 3, 23). This simplification often removes the very struggle that promotes students’ learning and engagement (17).  It is the struggle that fosters deep learning and understanding (13, 25).

Teachers unlikely to challenge their students if they do not view them as capable of complexity. Instead, the opposite happens: teachers engage in over-scaffolding, dumbing-down, and simplify the learning.  To be sure, much of this rescuing behavior is done with good intentions.  Teachers and parents think that, by making the material "easy" to grasp, they are giving students the opportunity to be successful.  These teachers often focus on work completion rather than learning, on product rather than process, and on the short-term rather than the long haul.  In studies of how teachers respond to students’ struggles, teachers who evaluated students’ responses as simply right or wrong tended to adapt tasks in ways that reduced the complexity of the tasks and simply made it possible for students to “get” right answers.  In contrast, teachers who focused on understanding students’ thinking were able to build on that thinking and make adaptations that enhanced both task complexity and students’ opportunity to engage with the concepts (3).  In studies of parents who regularly intervened to “help” children by taking over and completing the task for them, researchers found it had a negative effect on children’s persistence and engagement with the tasks (12).

Another driver of both teachers’ reduction of challenge and students’ fear of it is that too many of us simply do not see the benefits of learning from our mistakes. We may have internalized society’s message that mistakes are failures that reflect badly on us and thus must be avoided at all costs.   However, research suggests that academic struggle is necessary for growth. Making mistakes, but more importantly learning from them, helps with brain growth and connectivity (1).  Some of the highest achieving people in the world are those who have struggled the most. Simply put: if we are not struggling, we are not learning.  

Given many teachers' efforts to reduce complexity, it may come as a surprise to learn that students report that they actually like and value a degree of cognitive complexity as well as the feeling of being pushed and challenged—as long as it is accompanied with support (8, 5, 11, 17).  More demanding tasks encourage students to seek out connections in their learning, which keeps them more intrinsically interested, engaged, and motivated (8). The flipside is that when students don’t feel like they are being cognitively challenged, they are more likely to disengage. National studies confirm that lack of challenge is a reason for disengagement in the classroom  (8, 21, 22, 26). 

Additionally, challenge helps students develop a growth mindset (6).  As students learn to overcome challenges, they come to see challenges and setbacks as a natural step in the process of learning (7). One study of students in Chile found that students with a growth mindset were 3 times more likely to score at the top 20% of the test, while students with a fixed mindset were 4 times more likely to score at the bottom 20% (19). Not only is a growth mindset associated with better performance and learning outcomes, but it also affects students’ perceptions of schools. When students have a fixed mindset, schools are seen as threatening places where students have to prove their intelligence. In contrast, when students have a growth mindset, schools are viewed as exciting places filled with challenge and growth (19).

What constitutes a challenging task versus a task that is just hard?  There are many ways in which tasks might be made both challenging and engaging.  Dan Meyer argues that it is perplexity, not real-life application, that engages students in mathematics (17).  He says that perplexity is simply the stuff of being perplexed. It is something that piques interest, which makes us want to know more, that has a bit of both mystery and complexity to it.  Creating cognitive conflict is another way to create the conditions in which students want to learn how to think (18, 20).  In science, challenging tasks require students to 1) use knowledge to explain observable phenomenon; 2) reason with observations and data to construct or evaluate explanatory models or theory; and 3) use evidence to develop arguments (10).  Yet another way to challenge students is by placing them in the Zone of Proximal Development, the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can achieve with guidance (14).

What It Looks and Sounds Like

Of course, there is no single way this principle will look and sound. There is ample room for individuals to add their own creativity and stamp on things. The list below is a sampling of ideas that might be useful to advance your practice.

• Emphasize the process of learning over the final product. When students understand how they can control, direct, and change their own learning process (through their use of strategies, study habits, etc.), the more they will understand that they have the ability to tackle challenges.

• Teach students that their intelligence can be developed and that they can “grow their brains.” This growth occurs when we stretch, push, and press ourselves in new learning situations, causing the brain to create new connections between brain cells through a process that changes the balance of available neurotransmitters and changing how connections are made (27).

• See all your students as powerful, capable learners and thinkers. Students can tell when a teacher doesn’t believe in them, so this must be genuine.

• Use the Learning Pit Model developed by James Nottingham (18) to help students visualize the learning process and understand why challenge is a necessary part of learning. See Exhibit 1.

• Plan instruction using the Learning Pit’s 4 Stages of Challenge (18). See Exhibit 2.

• Provide feedback that acknowledges effort and actions more than ability. For instance, you might begin a feedback session by saying: “Let’s talk about what you tried, and what you can try next.” This helps students understand that making mistakes is okay but that they can overcome them (7).

• Use routines like “I used to think…Now I think” to communicate that our learning, our thinking, our understanding is always changing, growing, and developing.

• Understand that not all failure is productive nor does it stem from the same source. Mistakes fall into three broad categories: preventable, complexity-related, and intelligent. See the Spectrum of Failure (28) in Exhibit 3.

• Talk about your own embrace of challenge, showing your student how you are stretching yourself, trying new things, growing and learning.

• Celebrate mistakes as opportunities for learning. Use a routine such as “My Favorite No” to make this a normal part of your classroom (see resources below).

• Create tasks with “Low Threshold, High Ceiling, and Wide Walls” that allow students to naturally self-differentiate and find their own point of challenge (see resource section below for video example).

• Scaffold learning when needed but don’t over scaffold. Don’t rob students of the opportunity to problem solve and experiment.

• Encourage productive struggle and support risk-taking (see Exhibit 4)

• Make sure every unit of instruction is filled with worthwhile learning opportunities that ask students to engage in novel application, meaningful inquiry, and effective communication and that are valued by students (see Exhibit 5).

• Make prototyping, drafting, trial runs, and experimentation a regular part of learning so that meaningful, productive mistakes happen.

• Use structures such as the Ladder of Feedback or SAIL to encourage revision and growing ideas.

• Allow opportunities for students to continue to learn even after a summative test. This might mean using master quizzes that focus only on items students initially missed, reflective test analysis, peer-to-peer teaching (see “Allowing Test Retakes” in resources for more ideas).

Reflecting on Your Teaching

Reflect on what gets valued, shared, and celebrated in your classroom:

• Does my response to student mistakes indicate that I see mistakes as a sign of failure or an opportunity for learning?

• What is celebrated in my classroom: grades, progress, personal growth, something else? How so?

• What image do I hold in my head of each of my students as a learner? How does this image get translated into actions? Do my actions communicate that I have confidence that they are the sort of person who can come up with relevant questions, opinions, reasons, examples, and comparisons?

• When my students fail, do I seek to understand why or do I simply assume it can always be attributed to either a lack of effort or ability?

• Where was the challenge, the stretch, the press in my lesson today? Were all students’ challenged or just some?

• How am I finding the point of challenge for all of my students?

• In what ways do I have a growth mindset and where do I have a fixed mindset? Note: Dweck has indicated we are all a mix of both and no one is completely 100% one or the other.

• Where and when do I give students time for structured, meaningful reflection on their learning? Is this meaningfully influencing how students approach their learning in the next round? If so, how? If not, why not?

• What was the last big challenge I faced? How did I tackle it? When and how might I share this story with my students?

• Do I inadvertently put a ceiling or cap on tasks and assignments so that students stop work and learning once they have reached that ceiling? How might I raise or lift the ceiling so that all students can find their point of challenge?

• When students complete a task or assignment easily and quickly, do I simply give them something else to do or do I redesign the task so that it is appropriately challenging for them?

• Do I tend to rescue students when they struggle or do I encourage their initiative by asking questions that will encourage them to do the thinking?

Using Quick Data to Inform Your Efforts

At the end of a week of instruction, ask student to complete an Exit Ticket reflection for you on Where’s the Stretch? The Exit Ticket consists of the following two questions:

• Where were you stretched this week in your learning by the lessons, activities, and learning that we/you did? Tell me about why you selected that particular moment/event.

• Where did you stretch or push yourself personally? Tell me about what you did, why, and how you felt about that.

While only two questions, it will be important to give students enough time to reflect on the entire week of learning and come up with the two events and to write about a paragraph for each. If this is the first time using these prompts, you will need to talk about the idea of a stretch in one’s learning: what it looks like, what it feels like, and why it is important to our learning. This might include a discussion of why challenge matters and how it feeds learning. We use the word stretch to try and capture the sweet spot of learning, when things are not too easy but also not so difficult that they become out of reach.

If you are new to using Exit Tickets, a key part of their success is that teachers have to show their students that the time students spend on them matters—that we as teachers read them and use them in our planning. This often means sharing our insights and learning, and what are planning to do with it, with our students after we have read them.

Some things to think about as you read through students’ responses:

• What interesting or surprising details do you notice?

• How are students’ responses similar to what you expected and what is different?

• Do students’ response reflect that they understand the concept of a “stretch” versus something merely being difficult or hard? What lets you know that? If they don’t, where, when, and how will you revisit that discussion?

• Do students understand the idea of stretching or pushing themselves and how they might do that? What lets you know that? If they don’t, where, when, and how will you revisit that discussion?

• Do students’ reactions to their stretches indicate that these moments produced joy, a sense of accomplishment, and a greater sense of self-efficacy as learners?

• What do you notice about the types of learning opportunities that produced a stretch? Are there some common factors or elements you are noticing?

• What did you notice about student learning (either as individuals or as a group) in the stretch moments they identified as you were teaching? Were you aware students were being stretched? Had you planned on that to happen or not? Did you press into it? Were there ways you might have pressed into it even more?

• Are there students who cannot identify a stretch? Why do you think this is? How might you model, support, and help them to do so in the future?

• How will you share what you have learned with your students the next time you see them? How will you use this data in your planning?

Connection to the 8 Cultural Forces

Interactions In our interactions with students, we can show that we believe in them as capable learners able to solve problems and build understanding. This doesn’t mean we are not helpful, but we avoid rescuing students or doing the thinking for them. In addition, we press students in their thinking to push and advance their understanding by listening to them, questioning them, and allowing them to respond with elaborated thinking. We don’t get frustrated when students make valid learning mistakes, but celebrate them as an opportunity to learn. Our feedback acknowledges effort and actions over ability.

Opportunities. We create learning opportunities that challenge students and engage them in productive struggle. These may be opportunities to explore big complex issues or those that contain a curious case of perplexity that will engage them. We seek to find the point of challenge for all students by creating low-threshold, high-ceiling tasks that self-differentiate. We create opportunities for trial runs, drafts, and prototyping, where the point is to learn from initial efforts. We create opportunities for reflection on the struggles of learning and the opportunity to learn from mistakes.

Modeling. As more experienced learners, we model how we deal with mistakes, frustrations, and failures when we encounter them ourselves. We might look at historical and current models of learning through trial and error and mistakes, highlighting the process of learning as one of continual growth. The Learning Pit (18), provides a visual model of the learning process so that students come to expect a period of confusion.

Language. We use the language of trials, drafts, prototype, first runs, and so on to give students a vocabulary to talk about an important phase of learning. We also have and can use a language of feedback (clarifying, valuing, questioning, suggesting). We use a language of learning more focused on effort, progress, and the future than on grades, performance, and ability: “Let’s talk about what you tried, and what you can try next.” “Where was the stretch for you in this?”

Routines. We use routines that focus on reflection, such as ESP+I , I used to think…, and My Favorite No, which embed the view that learning is continually evolving and includes struggle. We use routines and protocols to support peer feedback and prototyping, such as SAIL and the Ladder of Feedback. We use routines to help students explore complex issues and ideas, such as Tug-of-War or 4 Corner Debate.

Expectations. When we hold the belief and expectation that learning is complex, multi-faceted, iterative in nature, and contains challenges, our students will gradually come to see it in a similar way (see Principle #2, reference 17). We also must believe that people can grow in their intelligence, having an understanding of and expectation for a growth mindset.

Time. Creating and realizing opportunities for challenge does take more time than simply delivering content and expecting students to memorize it. But this time is an investment in students’ deeper learning that produces both more engagement and better academic performance in the long-run.

Environment. When the walls of our classroom celebrate the messy, inchoate, evolving, and complex nature of learning through the display of prototypes, reflections, analysis, and ongoing learning rather than simply products, we reinforce the message that this is how we view learning and that the process is as important to celebrate as the product, perhaps even more so.

MIndset # 7 Learning occurs at the Point of Challenge