{"id":1965,"date":"2019-11-05T09:10:58","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T09:10:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eho.zrs.mybluehost.me\/?p=1965"},"modified":"2021-09-28T10:28:39","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T10:28:39","slug":"why-frustration-may-be-really-good-for-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/why-frustration-may-be-really-good-for-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Why frustration may be really good for learning"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve been enjoying David Epstein’s new book, Range<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the chapter, Thinking Fast and Slow, he explores how training often works best when people are not given hints and help, but instead are encouraged to struggle for longer.<\/p>\n

He argues that if you help people, so that they appear to get the answers more quickly, you may be undermining long-term retention.\u00a0For example in one experiment with monkeys learning,\u00a0\u201cThe more hints that were available during training, the better the monkeys performed during early practice, and the worse they performed on test day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The greater the initial\u00a0struggle, the more enduring the results. As Epstein puts it, \u201cStruggling to retrieve information primes the brain for subsequent learning, even when the retrieval itself is unsuccessful.\u201d<\/p>\n

He shares a detailed analysis of US Air Force training in higher maths. One group of professors got better results in early assessments and were more highly rated by students. But a second group, who created more of a struggle, achieved much better results in the long term. It appears that, “(t)he professors who caused short term struggle but long-term gains were facilitating \u2018deep learning\u2019 by making connections.\u201d<\/p>\n

This goes against the usual demand for immediate, concrete\u00a0outcomes from group meetings. It’s\u00a0something we have long been wary of, especially in relation to long-term impacts.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the book Epstein refers to the unpredictability of modern business and life,\u00a0and how relying on familiar tools may actually be preventing us from innovating, or indeed seeing a problem at all. This is interesting to us as facilitators because we too can become over-reliant on familiar tools or \u2018overlearned behaviour\u2019.<\/p>\n

Congruence is another organisational concept that rarely gets questioned. Many organisations stress the importance of alignment around goals or values.\u00a0But\u00a0a study that systematically examined a broad swath of organisations across an industry\u00a0found that cultural congruence had no influence on any measure of organisational success. Further studies showed that \u201cthe most effective leaders and organisations had range; they were, in effect, paradoxical. They could be demanding and nurturing, orderly and entrepreneurial, even hierarchical and individualistic all at once. A level of ambiguity, it seemed, was not harmful…even for decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

This creates an interesting challenge for us as facilitators – are we willing to let groups struggle with confusion or do we succumb to the temptation to make it easy for them? Do we try to “tidy up” for them when there’s confusion and ambiguity?<\/p>\n

Our own preference is to resist the lure of short term highs and trust the intelligence and resilience of participants to figure things out at their own pace.\u00a0And to practice \u201cactive open-mindedness\u201d – viewing our own ideas and ways of doing things as hypotheses in need of continual testing.<\/p>\n

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We’ve been enjoying David Epstein’s new book, Range. In the chapter, Thinking Fast and Slow, he explores how training often works best when people are not given hints and help, but instead are encouraged to struggle for longer. He argues that if you help people, so that they appear to get the answers more quickly, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1965"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1968,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965\/revisions\/1968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}