TITLE: Confusion is the Sweat of Learning
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: May 18, 2016 11:27 AM
DESC: 
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That's a great line from Rhett Allain in
<A HREF="http://www.wired.com/2013/10/telling-you-the-answer-isnt-the-answer/">
   Telling You the Answer Isn't the Answer</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 Students are under the impression that when they are stuck and
 confused, they are doing something wrong.  Think of it this way.
 What if you went to the gym to work out but you didn't get
 sweaty and you weren't sore or tired?  You would probably feel
 like you really didn't get any exercise.  The same is true for
 learning.  Confusion is the sweat of learning.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

As I read the article, I was a little concerned that Allain's
story comes from a physics course designed for elementary
education majors...  Shouldn't education majors already know
that learning is hard and that the teacher's job isn't simply
to give answers?  But then I realized how glad I am that these
students have a chance to learn this lesson from a teacher who
is patient enough to work through both the science and the
pedagogy with them.

One of the biggest challenges for a teacher is designing workouts
that ride along a thin line: confusing students just enough to
stretch them into learning something valuable, without working
them so hard that they become disheartened by the confusion and
failure.  This is hard enough to do when working with students
individually.  The larger and more diverse a class is, the more
the teacher has to start shooting for the median, designing
materials that work well enough often enough for most of the
students and then doing triage with students on both ends of the
curve.

Another is helping students learn to appreciate the confusion,
perhaps even relish it.  The payoff is worth the work.
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