Introduction
Rigor is often discussed among educators, but can be misunderstood. While rigor involves high standards for every student, it is essential to pair these standards with the right support. Creating an environment that encourages both challenges and understanding can lead to students’ success. It is all about fostering productive struggle, where students are pushed to think critically, but are also supported just enough to make progress.
What is the Productive Struggle?
In their article, How Do We Find the Right Level of Challenge for Our Learners?, authors John Almarode, Douglass Fisher, and Nancy Frey explain that productive struggle happens when a task is hard enough to make learners think hard. It is important that learners receive the right help to stay motivated and not feel overwhelmed. Research, such as the Visible Learning MetaX, shows that productive struggle can lead to an average growth of 0.74 standard deviations. This significant improvement shows how effective it is to challenge students in their learning zones. Barbara Blackburn describes productive struggle as the perfect balance between giving help and letting learners work on their own.
A productive struggle refers to different things for different students. Almarode, Fisher, and Frey stated that what is hard for one student might not be hard for another. Some students find things more difficult than others do. Therefore, the first step in finding the correct level of challenge is to understand what makes something complex or difficult.
Complexity refers to the difficulty level of a learning task. For example, finding a figurative language is easier than comparing how different authors use it to help readers understand it. This is particularly true if the text is new to the reader. Similarly, understanding a historical document’s purpose, message, and audience is harder than simply listing the traits of a historical event, as noted by Almarode, Fisher, and Frey.
Almarode, Fisher, and Frey stated that difficulty indicates how much effort is needed to complete a learning task, reach a goal, and meet success standards. For example, solving 25 math problems is more difficult than solving just two different math questions. This also involves the use of different strategies. Doing a complex lab experiment might be easier than performing the experiment and writing a detailed laboratory report. However, if I have already mastered the 25 math problems, they might not seem difficult for me. This shows how hard it is to find the right level of difficulty where a good challenge occurs. Ultimately, the effort is definitely worth it.
Productive struggles encourage students to try different methods and learn from their mistakes instead of looking for quick answers. It values the learning process as much as the final result, indicating that facing challenges is important for growth.
Once we understand what productive struggle is and how it affects students differently, it is important to know why encouraging this struggle helps students to learn deeply and believe in themselves.
The Importance of Productive Struggle
Lee Ann Jung, author of Thriving in the Zone of Productive Struggle, says that productive struggle is working hard on tough tasks. This is important for deep learning and confidence building. She explained this idea using Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD). Knowing this helps to create challenges that help people grow.
Jung discusses two ideas: mastery experiences and the zone of proximal development. Mastery experiences occur when we succeed in a struggle. The zone of proximal development is about giving students opportunities to push their limits, learn from mistakes, and succeed through hard work. Jung says it’s important to make learning fun and help students succeed, but we shouldn’t remove all challenges. Easy tasks might feel good but can stop students from understanding deeply and improving their skills. Jung cites “Without challenges, students might not grow up in important areas, such as thinking about their own thinking and perseverance” (Hiebert & Grouws, 2007).
Jung says it’s important to know that even good things can have limits. When students face difficult challenges, they may feel that they cannot succeed. This struggle can make them feel overwhelmed, frustrated, or motivated. While challenges can help them grow, if they are too hard, students may start doubting themselves. This can lead to loss of confidence and avoidance of tasks. When problems seem too big, students might think they do not have the skills to succeed, affecting not just one task or subject but their overall confidence in school.
What Struggle Qualifies as Productive?
According to Barbara Blackburn, author of Productive Struggle is a Learner’s Sweet Spot, productive struggle occurs when students are challenged just enough to think hard but still get help to avoid frustration. It is not about giving students difficult tasks or leaving them alone. Instead, it means creating tasks that are slightly harder than what students can now do. This makes them try hard, make mistakes, and solve their problems. Students should work through challenges on their own before receiving help. This helps them to become more resilient, confident, and better at thinking critically. Teachers help only when students are stuck, often by asking questions instead of providing answers. This keeps students interested and motivated, without overwhelming them. In the end, productive struggle helps students learn more deeply, become more independent, and see challenges as opportunities to grow, not as things to avoid.
See Productive Struggle in Action
Barbara Blackburn suggests several specific activities to promote productive struggle in the classroom. One key activity is the use of the “Bump in the Road” metacognitive guide, where students read a less challenging text on a topic and identified two to four points where they encounter confusion or difficulty. They first attempt to resolve these struggles independently, then collaborate with a partner and only seek teacher assistance if needed. This process helps students build background knowledge and vocabulary, and prepare them for more complex texts and tasks.
Another activity involves metacognitive guides that prompt students to write down their predictions or thoughts about a text, and then search for the author’s points and supporting evidence as they read. Some guides provided structured statements for students to agree or disagree with, encouraging them to locate information in the text and engage in group discussions by comparing their opinions with the content of the text.
Blackburn also emphasizes the importance of using facilitating questions instead of giving direct answers when students struggle, such as asking if there is something in a previous paragraph that could help them or reminding them of similar problems they had solved before. This approach encourages critical thinking, persistence, and independence, allowing students to make multiple attempts, seek help from peers, and use other resources before teacher intervention
Through these activities, Blackburn demonstrates how productive struggle can be intentionally built into lessons, supporting students as they develop resilience, a deeper understanding, and the ability to learn from challenges.
How can a productive struggle be created in a classroom?
From the Goyen Foundation, a blog on EMBRACING PRODUCTIVE STRUGGLE: WHY IT’s ESSENTIAL FOR LITERACY LEARNING by Jami Witherell provided answers in creating a productive struggle in the classroom. They are as follows:
- Create Challenges That Are Just Right: The goal is to strike a balance in which the challenge is demanding yet manageable. In literacy, this could involve selecting a reading selection that is slightly above a student’s current level or encouraging them to construct more intricate sentences. It is not about making tasks insurmountable but about finding the right level of difficulty to motivate.
- Normalize Making Mistakes: It is essential for students to understand that making mistakes is part of learning. This is where true growth occurs. Foster a classroom environment in which errors are viewed positively rather than negatively. In literacy, this could mean applying the editing process in writing or acknowledging a student’s ability to self-correct while reading.
- Pose Thought-Provoking Questions: Instead of providing immediate answers, the students were encouraged to think critically by asking open-ended questions. Queries like “What might you try next?” or “Which part of the word stands out to you?” inspires them to process information, which is their ultimate goal.
- Demonstrate Resilience: Finally, we illustrate to the students what it means to persist. Whether you are tackling a challenging text with them or sharing your own experiences of struggling through a literacy task, modeling resilience can significantly motivate students to persevere.
The photographs shown above were obtained from the Jackie Gerstein EdD. Gerstein wrote Letting Your Learners Experience Productive Struggle and she shows how to assist learners with their Productive Struggles.
First, Gerstein allowed students to struggle.
Second, Gerstein says to her learners, who struggle and want her to fix it – do it for them:
- I know you can figure this out.
- I will not do it for you. I have faith that you can do this.
- You got this.
- Take as much time as you need. There is no time limit.
- Why do you not try _ minutes? If you do not get it by then, I will help you.
- What steps can you take to achieve success?
- Why do you not ask your classmates how they worked on the problem?
- You might want to try something different.
Conclusion
Struggling was not something that was afraid of. This is the key aspect of learning. This helps students improve their reading, writing, thinking, and problem-solving skills. So, when you hear the word “struggle,” do not avoid it. Embrace it. This is where the real learning begins.