Active Learning Starts With Struggle

Mountains in Austria

Last spring I spent 10 days in Austria and Germany with my mom. I took German in high school but I definitely needed a refresher before my trip. I spent 90 days straight hanging out with an emotionally manipulative green owl and managed to relearn some important nouns, verbs, and conjugations. In fact, I was really nailing my daily German lessons - often obtaining 100% accuracy on my first attempts. “Wow!” I thought, “I must be better at German than I thought!” 

Feeling pleasantly surprised by how much I retained from high school German, we sat down to our very first dinner in Vienna. Eager to use my skills and impress my mom, I confidently said, “Kann ich habe Kassler Rippchen?” (“Can I have the smoked pork chop?”) The waiter cheerfully says, in what I perceived to be impossibly fast German, “Natürlich! Gekocht oder gegrillt?” 

I blinked. 

“Uhhh, ich…. Err…” Unfazed, my waiter switches right over to English. “Boiled or broiled?” 

Learning something new (like a language) is humble and hard work! I shouldn’t have been so easily duped into thinking that my masterful accomplishments on a gamified language learning app indicated anything about my abilities to navigate my way through German-speaking countries. I had forgotten that the most meaningful learning happens when I'm making mistakes, feeling uncertain, and pushing through my struggles. It turns out that “desirable difficulty” and “productive struggle” aren't obstacles to understanding, but essential to learning (Bjork & Bjork, 1992; Sriram, 2020). They help learners better retrieve and apply key information.

In my embarrassing, albeit common, experience with language learning, I would have benefited greatly from recreating a similar situation before getting on the airplane, rather than relying on rote memorization. If I had had the foresight to create a roleplay activity for me to practice such a scenario with a German-speaking friend or tutor, I may have been able to navigate my restaurant situation a bit better. This is an example of active learning. 

“Active learning generally refers to any instructional method that engages students in the learning process beyond listening and passive note taking,” (University of California, Berkeley, n.d.). 

Historically, instruction has been largely passive - a teacher speaking at students about a particular topic while students are expected to absorb and recall that information for an exam or final project. It’s such a common occurrence, in fact, that we tend to expect this format even beyond our formal education (How many times have you joined a webinar only to leave once a breakout room activity begins?). 

Lectures will always have a place in education. After all, how are you supposed to conjugate “to eat” if you still don’t know the German word for “to eat”? Lecture material is helpful for setting up a foundation of knowledge and for short-term recall tasks. Deeper learning, however, requires active components that push the student to engage in higher order thinking. It’s one thing to know the word for “to eat” or “potato” - it’s another thing entirely to understand sentence structures and converse in a different language. 

Jumping from vocabulary recall to using full sentences requires active practice, struggle, and likely a coach. This is what Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky referred to as the zone of proximal development (ZPD). ZPD refers to the space between what a learner can do independently (e.g. memorize key verbs and nouns) and what they cannot yet do without guidance (e.g. order a meal in a different language) (Eun, 2017). The ZPD is often an uncomfortable space - it’s where we fail and make mistakes and stumble - but it is crucial for longer-term, deeper learning. We learn more from our mistakes than we do our successes. Using active learning techniques like role play, case-based instruction, problem-based learning, concept-mapping, debate, fishbowl discussions, and more can support students through that zone of proximal development so that they can master skills and knowledge they didn’t have before. It allows learners to make mistakes in a lower-stakes environment, which allows them to grow. 

Visual representation of the Zone of Proximal Development

Had I invested in a German tutor to put me into these awkward situations, I would have known that saying “Kann ich habe…” was the incorrect phrase to use when ordering food. I would have started with this sentence (which uses an English sentence structure) and had a tutor correct me. Through starts and stops I would have been coached through ordering a meal in German that may have helped me avoid that embarrassing moment in Vienna. 

Learning is often uncomfortable and that is important for us to remember. If we want to cultivate individuals who think deeply and apply the most important concepts weeks, months, and years after they leave our classrooms, we need to build learning experiences that are active, at the right difficulty level, and provide opportunities for feedback and coaching. 

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References 

Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1992). A new theory of disuse and an old theory of stimulus fluctuation. In A. F. Healy, S. M. Kosslyn, & R. M. Shiffrin (Eds.), Essays in honor of William K. Estes, Vol. 1. From learning theory to connectionist theory; Vol. 2. From learning processes to cognitive processes (pp. 35–67). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Eun, B. (2019) The zone of proximal development as an overarching concept: A framework for synthesizing Vygotsky’s theories. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 51(1): 18-30. 10.1080/00131857.2017.1421941

The Effortful Educator. (n.d.) Desiring Difficulties. The Effortful Educator: Applying Cognitive Psychology to the Classroom. https://theeffortfuleducator.com/2020/05/22/desiring-difficulties/ 

University of California, Berkeley. (n.d.). Active learning. UC Berkeley Center for Teaching & Learning. https://teaching.berkeley.edu/teaching-guides-resources/teaching-your-course/active-learning

Sriram, R. (2020, April 13). The neuroscience behind productive struggle. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/neuroscience-behind-productive-struggle/