Why learning shouldn’t always be easy
Manu Kapur is Professor of Learning Sciences and Higher Education at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. Manu explains that we may feel that learning should be easy and fun, but deep learning has to be effortful.
“It is frustrating because you’re always by definition in a zone where what you currently know is not sufficient for where you want to go.”
Manu Kapur
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When educators design failure in the initial learning of something new, students learn better from the subsequent instruction.
Learners have to be in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ – where learning is challenging but not too hard – for deep learning to happen.
Some ways of learning may feel less effective and lead to more errors but lead to better performance in the long term.
If you want to learn a sport, nobody questions the fact that there will be some pain. You know, it’s like it’s so intuitive though. Yeah, I’m going to be tired, I’m going to hurt and I’m going to go through… I’m going to be frustrated, I get emotional.
We buy into that and we don’t complain that that’s how it is. But when it comes to learning we have a feeling that learning should be easy. Learning should be fun, learning should always be like…
But deep learning is not like that. Deep learning also has the same kinds of qualities where learning has to be effortful, it’s intentional. It is frustrating because you’re always by definition in a zone where what you currently know is not sufficient for where you want to go. That zone is uncertain, like, you know, and that’s why you need scaffolding, you need experts to help you there. But it is inherently a zone where frustration is going to happen, emotions are going to be a roller coaster and you’re going to have to persist through that.
And so frustration to a degree is good. Feeling bad emotions and negative emotions to a degree is good, provided it happens in that safe environment.
And those are the opportunities that we design for students so that they can develop that. So making learning easy does not ease learning always.
Footnotes
Manu Kapur is Professor of Learning Sciences and Higher Education at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. Prior to joining ETH Zurich, he was a Professor of Psychological Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong (EduHK). Manu also worked as the Head of the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Academic Group (CTL AG) as well as the Head of Learning Sciences Lab (LSL) at the National Institute of Education (NIE) of Singapore. Manu’s upcoming book is called Productive Failure.
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