me king mo worry

According to a new study, telling children that learning is difficult makes them better students.  This conclusion might seem somewhat counter-intuitive until we consider the detrimental impact of stress on working memory.

Published by the American Psychological Association the study sought to investigate the effect of expectations on children’s learning ability:

“By being obsessed with success, students are afraid to fail,” said Frederique Autin, PhD, from the University of Poitiers, France. “So they are reluctant to take difficult steps to master new material.”

“People usually believe that academic achievement simply reflects students’ inherent academic ability, which can be difficult to change,” said Professor Jean-Claude Croizet, PhD. “But teachers and parents may be able to help students succeed just by changing the way in which the material is presented.”

After trying to solve a set of very difficult anagrams, one group of French sixth graders received the feedback that learning is difficult and failure is common, but practice will help. A second group were simply asked how they tried to solve the problems. For both groups this was followed by a working memory test; working memory predicts many aspects of academic achievement, including reading comprehension, problem solving and IQ. Those who had heard that learning is difficult performed significantly better on the working memory test, especially on more difficult problems, than the second group or than a third control group who had neither tackled the anagrams nor talked to the researchers.

A second, similar experiment included an additional group of students who tackled simpler anagrams that this time could be solved: this group was not told that learning is difficult. All of the students then completed a reading comprehension test. The children who were told that learning is difficult scored higher than the other groups, including the students who had solved the simpler anagrams.

A third experiment also surveyed the children’s feelings about their own academic competence. Again, the group that was told that learning is difficult performed better in reading comprehension and reported fewer feelings of incompetence.

Although the impact of such one-time positive reinforcement is probably short term, the study noted, the fact that working memory capacity can be improved simply by boosting confidence and reducing fear of failure “suggests that students will benefit from education that gives them room to struggle with difficulty,” Autin said. “Teachers and parents should emphasize children’s progress rather than focusing solely on grades and test scores. Learning takes time and each step in the process should be rewarded, especially at early stages when students most likely will experience failure.”