What is productive struggle?
Harvard teacher educator Kay Merseth offers these insights on productive struggle:
“. . . it’s not about guessing what the teacher wants to hear or about finding a particular answer. It is about the process of thinking, making sense, and persevering in the face of not knowing exactly how to proceed or whether a particular approach will work. Exploring, investigating one or multiple approaches, and articulating a chain of reasoning behind the approaches also characterize productive struggle.”
Classrooms that embrace the concept of productive struggle:
“. . . it’s not about guessing what the teacher wants to hear or about finding a particular answer. It is about the process of thinking, making sense, and persevering in the face of not knowing exactly how to proceed or whether a particular approach will work. Exploring, investigating one or multiple approaches, and articulating a chain of reasoning behind the approaches also characterize productive struggle.”
Classrooms that embrace the concept of productive struggle:
- Are focused on the learning that takes place during the process rather than the end product or a certain answer.
- Involve student-to-student academic conversations--they are learning from each other as much as they are learning from the teacher or technology.
- Utilize formative assessment as a key component to help students make progress in their struggle.
- Empower students by teaching them HOW to think not WHAT to think.
- Include teachers asking the "tough" questions to push kids to THINK rather than to answer it.
- Are ones where kids aren't "rescued" by the teacher. The teacher's role is to support them through their thinking.
It's a struggle to get kids willing to struggle...but it's a struggle we need to struggle through!
As you learn to embrace productive struggle in your classroom, you will find yourself having productive struggle. This is uncomfortable and at times you will have the thoughts, "I don't want to do this" and "Is this really worth it?" That's normal! Pushing past that is key. You will have breakthrough moments when you will feel like you have climbed to the peak of a mountain. And following that, you may find yourself in a valley again! This is normal! Teachers with a growth mindset will find their emotions to be just like that--looking like a mountain range with peaks and valleys!
The first step for establishing productive struggle in the classroom is to make sure you give students a challenging task that may ask them to synthesize their learning from other lessons or content areas in order to break through to a new understanding or new learning. Your "caught red handed" challenge for this week is to make an appointment with Alisha or Jeanette to develop and implement a task that would require your students to struggle productively.
The first step for establishing productive struggle in the classroom is to make sure you give students a challenging task that may ask them to synthesize their learning from other lessons or content areas in order to break through to a new understanding or new learning. Your "caught red handed" challenge for this week is to make an appointment with Alisha or Jeanette to develop and implement a task that would require your students to struggle productively.
Future Blog Topics on Growth Mindset
- Task examples for productive struggle
- Effective feedback
- What about praise?