The Importance of Struggle

What is productive struggle? Why would we want students to struggle?  How do we engage students with productive struggle?  These questions are important to consider when planning for instruction.

There are a variety of definitions when it comes to productive struggle.  According to Heibert and Grouws, "productive struggle - effortful practice that goes beyond passive reading, listening, or watching - builds useful, lasting understanding and skill."  Productive struggle occurs when students do not immediately know an answer and need to work through a problem and think about it in a variety of ways. In Principles to Actions, "Effective mathematics teaching uses students' struggles as valuable opportunities to deepen their understanding of mathematics.  Students come to realize that they are capable of doing well in mathematics with effort and perseverance in reasoning, sense making, and problem solving."  Students are excited and thrive when they have the right amount of productive struggle. 

In math, one of the ways to have this productive struggle is by providing students rich mathematical problems.  In the video below, Diane Briars, past president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, emphasizes the need for teachers to offer students daily opportunities to engage in problem solving that requires reasoning. 

Students in Kindergarten through high school should be engaged in rich mathematical tasks.  Often times you will hear the terms "low floor, high ceiling" when describing various problems.  This means that all students should be able to find an entry point into the work, and yet allow for students to excel at high levels. As Diane Briars mentions, we are creating inequities if we all are not engaging students in reasoning and problem solving.  

At the elementary level, one way we are making sure all students experience productive struggle is by having grade levels complete various Fosnot units throughout the year.  These units are designed to foster deep understanding of the content by engaging students in solving multiple tasks in a real world context.    Earlier this year, first graders at Whittier were busy working with a unit entitled Double Decker bus.  In this unit, students used the context of passengers getting on and off a bus and modeled the situations with a bead rack.    In addition, students started to write their own addition and subtraction problems that could be solved.

At the third grade level, the Whittier students completed a unit called Groceries, Stamps, and Measuring Strips.  This unit served as an introduction into multiplication, and students were encouraged to find efficient strategies to find the total of a variety of groups. The students started with finding the total number of objects in a grocery store and then moved into working with stamps of different values.  By the end, students were using their multiplication (and measurement skills) to determine the size of buildings if they knew the size of a boy.

While the Fosnot units allow for productive struggle and enable students to make meaning of a variety of concepts, there are many other wonderful problem solving tasks that can be found on Blackboard.  

Jo Boaler describes it best as to why we need our students to productively struggle.

As you continue through this year,  engage your students with productive struggle as they solve a variety of math problems and see their excitement as they gain new understandings.  Even consider how you as a teacher productively struggles as you solve a variety of problems that come your way!