Can getting stuck ever help learning?
It can when the task is well designed. Generating and comparing attempts can activate prior knowledge, expose gaps and make later explanation more meaningful.[1]
How Toku uses this
Toku can give children unfamiliar but reachable challenges, let them commit to an approach, then use the result and explanation to shape the next attempt.
What research shows
Productive-failure research has found benefits for conceptual understanding and transfer when problem solving precedes well-designed instruction.[1]
Useful difficulty can improve later learning even when immediate performance is less smooth.[2]
Creative mathematical reasoning gives learners practice constructing a route rather than receiving every step in advance.[3]
Why this can matter for your child
Your child learns that an unsuccessful first route is information, not the end of the problem.
Some of the most useful thinking happens before the child knows the polished method, while they are testing what might work and noticing why it does or does not.
Questions this helps answer
- productive struggle learning
- productive failure children
- learning from mistakes problem solving
- should children struggle with hard problems
References
- Manu Kapur (2010). Productive failure in mathematical problem solving. Instructional Science.
- Elizabeth L. Bjork & Robert A. Bjork (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. Psychology and the Real World.
- Bert Jonsson, Carina Granberg & Johan Lithner (2020). Gaining mathematical understanding: the effects of creative mathematical reasoning and cognitive proficiency. Frontiers in Psychology.