Humans encounter struggles everyday. In the math classroom, productive struggle is essential for learning. Everyday teachers are striving to find the delicate balance between bringing in learners’ schema to engage with a task and offering enough new information to push them out of their comfort zone, all towards the end goal of conceptual mastery of content standards.

Why is Productive Struggle Essential?

We want students to use their experiences and knowledge of the world and math to grapple with new concepts while providing them supports and scaffolds to grasp onto that new learning. This relates to Zaretta Hammond’s work. In Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain¹, Hammond defines a warm demander as “a teacher who communicates personal warmth toward students while at the same time demands they work toward high standards.” Essentially, a warm demander holds high expectations while offering high support to reach those expectations.  Let’s consider how we might use the analogy of a warm demander to understand what productive struggle can look like for the students in our classrooms.

We Must Hold High Expectations

All students deserve access to high level teaching and learning. All students deserve access to rich Tier 1 instruction. All students deserve access to the opportunity to struggle and overcome struggle. Most importantly, all students are capable of doing these things.

In order to make this a reality, we must hold high expectations for all and talk to students in a way that demonstrates that belief. In what ways are we talking to students about what engagement looks and sounds like? Does it look the same for everyone? How do compliance behaviors get in the way of engagement? How is productive struggle evidence of engagement?

We Must Provide High Levels of Support

Each and every learner is coming to us with different experiences and understandings of the world, which means each learner will need something a little different to keep them in a space of productive struggle. Do learners start off engaged in the task and then lose focus over time? Are they unable to get started at all? Do they fly through it? These are all questions you can ask yourself to determine what level of support to provide each student.

How Can You Communicate that Struggle is Essential to the Learning Process?

Sending the message that struggle is essential to the learning process is the foundation for holding high expectations. If we’re not productively struggling, we are not learning.

• Examine your beliefs about students’ engagement and expectations. How are your beliefs shaping your behaviors in the classroom? Do you rescue some students when they’re encountering struggle and leave others to problem solve on their own?
• Consider the types of tasks you put in front of students. Are they high level or watered down? Are there multiple ways to solve and multiple ways to access the problem? What scaffolds (manipulatives, math tools, etc.) might offer access to all?
• What questions could you ask learners to offer them a nudge without rescuing them? 
• Talk to your students about struggle! Normalize struggle and talk through the ways we can overcome struggle. 

How Can You Learn More About Productive Struggle?

“By challenging them (students) and supporting them through struggle, you can help them build the strategies and thinking they can carry with them into their futures.”² As teachers, we are teaching students that overcoming struggle is a basic human skill. Building the skills for students to recognize and find ways to overcome struggle will support them in school and as they make their way through the world.

Join the KISD Math Team and others around the county at #MichME as they dive deep into the book “Productive Math Struggles” and ways to implement these actions into your classroom.

Join #MichME today!

Sources:

1. Hammond, Z. L. (2021). Culturally Responsive Teaching And The Brain. Independently Published.
2. SanGiovanni, J. J., Katt, S., & Dykema, K. J. (2020). Productive Math Struggle: A 6-Point Action Plan for Fostering Perseverance (Corwin Mathematics Series) (1st ed.). Corwin.

This blog post was written by Kelli VanSetters, Mathematics Specialist for Kent ISD and edited by Amanda Walma, Professional Learning Coordinator and Sara Johnson, PD Hub Intern at Kent ISD.