I pulled this over from a previous blog I used to write for. I was feeling a bit nostalgic this morning, and my son and I were practicing some writing, and he started his, "I can't do it," whine. I had to pull one from the memory book and help him through some learned helplessness. So I thought this might be useful for someone other than myself!
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By 8:00 this morning, I was in my usual spot
at the local college-the tutoring desk in the Academic Support Center. I
am in school there studying secondary biology education, and I happened
to land a sweet gig helping people out with their algebra
comprehension. And biology. And chemistry. And occasionally Anatomy
& Physiology. And while I don’t know everything about these
subjects, I’ve got a pretty good grasp on what’s going on in most
of them. My favorite thing ever is to help students seek true
comprehension of the subject. Except, 9 times out of 10, people don’t
come to me for understanding. They come to me for answers.
“Did you read it?” I pry.
“Well, yea, but… I just don’t get it. This is really confusing.” This is often accompanied by them looking down, shuffling their papers, and generally trying to avoid any eye contact. Because if they know me, they know the next question.
“Let me see the work you’ve done so far.”It’s my favorite thing to ask. Why? Because I love pointing out to them that they haven’t even attempted anything. They skim the problem, can’t come up with an immediate answer, and they immediately raise their hand, or run to me.
Where on Earth did this behavior emulate from? After much research (because that’s what I like to do when I don’t know the answer to a question), I have found that there’s actually a coined term for this: learned helplessness.
Psychologists and education experts are still weighing in on the origin of this state of mind that students get themselves into. The overall consensus is that at some point in the student’s life, they became conditioned under stressful stimuli: a challenging word problem, a hard math application, or something that requires multiple pathways to force a connection between two items. Pair this with a teacher who gives them all the answers they need, all the time, and they grow to expect it in every facet of their life. They stop developing their ability to problem solve. They give up before they even start to think, or try something. The problem is that it gets perpetuated when it’s met with a negative school experience-be it bad feedback from a teacher, intimidation from a peer, or repeated failure, it can lead students down the path to giving up. I see it every day, with students in every major, every age, every race, every gender. They give up and tell themselves they can’t, before they even begin.
I am only just beginning to understand the very fine line I must balance between helping too much and helping too little. Obviously student success is my number one priority-both personally and professionally. How do I help students and give them the answer they seek, but also show them the importance of comprehension?
Once again, I researched the information on what works best for unlearning learned helplessness. Here are some tips I found most effective, and I can’t wait to put them into practice.
- Accentuate the positive. Get to know the student’s strengths, and use these strengths as building blocks. Any compliment given must be genuine, so make sure you really know what type of learner your student is.
- Eliminate the weaknesses. Do not eliminate them by downplaying them, though. Deal with them head on, but do so in a tactful manner. If a student has a weakness in a particular area, address it. If she can’t add fractions, start talking about it. Use real world applications to take the focus off of the problem and more onto the concept.
- Go from familiar to new, using guided discovery. Ask students what preconceived notions the may have on certain subjects, and guide them into new material by challenging their theories. Ask them specific questions regarding the things they present, and let them come up with their own answers. If they ask questions in return, answer them with questions until you get something concrete to work with. This might seem like you are trying to be convoluting, but you are really just getting them to turn their brains on.
- Focus students’ attention on the goal of learning. If they are looking for the answer and you give it to them, they are not actively learning. Encourage them that it is okay to make mistakes, and encourage them that this is how they learn best.
***
So there you have it. I'm not a "future-teacher" anymore, but this is what I would recommend to those who are!
Be well!
-C
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