“Productive Failure”: Why Early Floundering Leads to Better Learning
Intuitively, I think we approach teaching with the goal of helping students avoid failure. So it's natural to step in if we see students floundering about and approaching a problem the wrong way. But what if we are hindering students' learning by stepping in too soon? Like stepping in too soon to help with spotting someone at the gym, or helping them too much on that last repetition. We certainly don't want anyone to get hurt or discouraged, of course! But a 2011 study suggests that too muc...