The Learning Power of Working Through Difficulty
By Catherine Ford, Program Director for Educational Development, Minnesota State
“How do I create learning experiences that challenge students enough to learn deeply without pushing them into frustration?”
Consider this vignette: Students are working through a complex case study. Conversations have slowed, brows are furrowed, and a few students are staring at their notes. One student finally says, “I’m not sure where to start.” Another offers a possible solution, but the group quickly identifies weaknesses in the approach. Progress is slow. Is this a sign that learning is breaking down, or is something important happening?
What Is Productive Struggle?
Productive struggle is the process of engaging with challenging tasks that require effort, persistence, and critical thinking (Mucheli & Chow, 2025; Roberts, University of San Diego Professional and Continuing Education). It involves the interplay of persistence, creativity, and conceptual understanding rather than simply arriving at the correct answer (Young, Bevan, & Sanders, 2023).
Popularized through mathematics education research, particularly the work of Hiroko Warshauer (2015), this concept is increasingly applied beyond mathematics and into broader teaching and learning contexts.
Productive Struggle and the Zone of Proximal Development
Productive struggle aligns with Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (Mucheli & Chow, 2025; Young, Bevan, & Sanders, 2023): learning is most likely when students encounter tasks just beyond what they can complete independently but still attainable with effort and support. Tasks that are too easy offer little opportunity for growth, while those that are too difficult can lead to frustration and disengagement. Productive struggle occurs between these extremes, where appropriate challenge and support keep students engaged in the intellectual work.
Productive struggle is not the absence of support. It is challenge paired with carefully designed support that keeps students engaged in the work. Mucheli and Chow (2025) argue that educators can help students remain in this zone by providing three conditions: appropriately calibrated challenge, guided scaffolding that preserves students’ role as the primary problem solver, and a psychologically safe environment that encourages risk-taking and persistence. Together, these conditions help ensure that struggle remains productive rather than becoming frustrating or destructive.
| ZPD Concept (Vygotsky) | Mucheli & Chow (2025) Component |
|---|---|
| The task must be beyond current independent performance | Calibrated challenge |
| The learner can succeed with appropriate support | Guided scaffolding |
| The learner must be willing to take risks and persist | Psychological safety and equity |
What Productive Struggle Looks Like in Practice
Understanding productive struggle as a balance of challenge and support is an important starting point, but the concept becomes most useful when translated into everyday teaching practices. Across disciplines, instructors can help students persist without taking over the intellectual work. Warshauer’s (2015) four strategies offer a practical framework: ask questions, encourage students to explain their thinking, give them time, and normalize struggle as part of learning.
| Strategy | Examples | Key point or connection |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Ask Questions Instead of Providing Answers | History: What evidence supports that interpretation? Biology: What pattern do you notice in the data? Composition: What is this source helping you understand? | Questions redirect thinking without solving the problem. |
| 2. Ask Students to Explain Their Thinking | Examples: Explain your reasoning. Compare two possible solutions. Describe how you arrived at your conclusion. | Connect to metacognition. |
| 3. Give Students Time | Examples: Waiting longer after asking a question. Requiring revision before providing instructor feedback. Building draft cycles into assignments. | Stepping in too soon can take the intellectual work away from students. |
| 4. Normalize Struggle | Examples: Share that confusion is often part of learning. Discuss common misunderstandings. Celebrate revisions and persistence, not just correct answers. | Students need psychological safety to take risks |
When Struggle Stops Being Productive
Productive struggle does not mean withholding support or expecting students to simply figure things out on their own. Struggle stops being productive when students face confusion without guidance, repeated failure without progress, excessive frustration, or tasks that significantly exceed their preparation. As Schonberg et al. (2026) and Mucheli and Chow (2025) emphasize, struggle can become destructive when persistent frustration is not paired with sufficient support. The goal is therefore not to remove challenge, but to recognize when students need additional guidance or scaffolding to move forward.
Signs Students Need More Support
Students may be moving beyond productive struggle when they:
- abandon multiple attempts,
- stop engaging,
- repeatedly apply the same ineffective strategy,
- express confusion about the task itself rather than the content,
- have no pathway forward despite effort.
Cultivating Productive Struggle
Productive struggle is not about making learning harder. It is about designing challenges that require students to think, persist, and make meaning while providing enough support to keep them moving forward. When faculty ask questions, encourage reflection, provide time, and normalize difficulty, they create conditions where students can learn through struggle rather than despite it.
Branching questions can support productive struggle when they:
- provide hints rather than answers,
- encourage reflection,
- target misconceptions,
- adapt support based on student responses.
Want to learn more about productive struggle?
Read
Warshauer, H. K. (2015). Strategies to support productive struggle. Mathematics teaching in the middle school, 20(7), 390-393.
Young, J.R., Bevan, D., & Sanders, M. (2024). How productive is the productive struggle? Lessons learned from a scoping review. International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science, and Technology (IJEMST), 12(2), 470-495. https://doi.org/10.46328/ijemst.3364
Explore
What Is Productive Struggle? [+ Strategies for Teachers] – University of San Diego Professional and Continuing Education.
Roberts, M. (2024). Teaching at Pitt: Embracing productive struggle, the key to success for college students. University Times, 56, 14.
Interested in exploring artificial intelligence tools in D2L Brightspace?
By Scott Wojtanowski, System Director for Educational Technology and Development, Minnesota State
The Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs recently approved the ASA Technology Council’s recommendation to explore D2L’s artificial intelligence tools, collectively known as Lumi.
The Learning Environment Committee report includes background information on this exploration and proposed assessment. D2L Lumi Pro includes tools for quiz generation, assignment and discussion ideation, content summarization, study support, insights, content generation, and content remixing.
Purpose
Evaluate whether D2L Lumi Pro delivers meaningful improvements in instructional quality and workflow efficiency compared to existing tools, particularly Copilot Chat, and determine whether those improvements justify the additional cost and support for future investment.
Who Should Participate?
We are seeking:
- Faculty teaching fully online, blended, or face-to-face courses
- Instructional designers
- Academic technology specialists
- Faculty developers
- Individuals interested in exploring generative AI within Brightspace
Participants should be willing to test one or more Lumi Pro features in comparison to Microsoft Copilot and provide feedback regarding quality, usefulness, and time savings.
Participant Expectations Participants will:
- Use one or more D2L Lumi Pro features within a non-production Brightspace course on MnSite (http://mnsite.learn.minnstate.edu/)
- Compare results against their typical workflow (including use of Copilot Chat or other AI tools)
- Complete a brief evaluation survey
- Provide examples and observations regarding the quality and usefulness of generated content
- Participate in a short feedback discussion, if requested
For optimal results, participants are encouraged to associate course content and quiz questions with Standards (Learning Outcomes) when available.
Evaluation Period
October 1, 2026 – January 31, 2027
How to Participate
If you’d like to participate in this exploration, please fill out this call for participants by Friday October 16.
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Expand Your Accessibility Toolkit with YuJa Panorama DocHub
By Scott Wojtanowski, System Director for Educational Technology and Development, Minnesota State
Members of the Minnesota State community are accustomed to using the Accessibility Assistant in Microsoft programs like Word and PowerPoint to perform automated checks for digital accessibility within individual files. In addition to the Accessibility Assistant, we wanted to direct your attention to YuJa Panorama’s DocHub.
To access DocHub, launch YuJa Panorama from your institution’s D2L Brightspace site.
DocHub allows you to upload, review, and improve the accessibility of documents outside of a Brightspace course. The tool can identify common accessibility issues, provide guidance on remediation, support automated repair workflows for select file types, and generate alternative formats that improve access for learners with diverse needs.
DocHub is particularly useful for evaluating PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and other materials before they are shared.
While automated tools can help identify and address many accessibility concerns, they should be used as part of a broader accessibility review process that includes manual evaluation and professional judgment.
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Visit the NED Events Calendar to view upcoming educational development opportunities. Visit the NED Resource Site for recordings of previous webinars and additional resources.
