The Trick to Combatting Learned Helplessness in Math Class

It’s safe to say that most math teachers have taught students who lack confidence when it comes to working independently. This learned helplessness can look like shutting down and not knowing where to start or constantly coming up to your desk to ask for help before even trying to figure out a problem on their own.

Math can be challenging for many students and the years of feeling like they “are not a math person” causes them to develop this sense of learned helplessness.

In the context of this blog post, learned helplessness refers to a psychological term that describes a situation where a student believes they have no control over a situation and that their efforts are pointless.

In a classroom setting, this often appears as a belief that math is too difficult, and there’s no point in trying to understand it. However, it’s important to understand that this mindset is a hurdle that can be overcome with practice and patience.

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Learned helplessness goes hand in hand with increased access to answers and information as well. Information is so easily accessible these days with Photomath and ChatGPT at our students’ fingertips.

They’re looking for quick wins and a simple answer. We know that as math classes get more advanced, it’s nearly impossible to just get a quick answer. Your students will eventually (if they don’t already) need to understand the concepts and figure out different ways to apply their skills.

So how do you get your students to buy into the idea that math is more than just a process?

Here’s the secret…

Encourage your students to embrace the struggle and don’t jump to the rescue right away.

Overcoming learned helplessness won’t be easy and it won’t happen overnight, but it will be worth it!

Your students have spent years thinking that they are not good at math, so it will take a lot of patience and practice to help your students unlearn these habits. Let’s dive into a few more ways that you can help your students build their independence.

Start simple.

Don’t overcomplicate the problems at first in order to ease into the problem-solving process. The goal is to build your students’ confidence through easy-to-grasp concepts.

You can also break down math concepts into small pieces and build from there. Once they begin to improve their confidence, you can increase the difficulty of the tasks you assign. You’ll be able to ask more open-ended questions and have discussions about different strategies they used to solve a problem.

Let me give you an example. If you are starting to teach solving equations with variables on both sides, it’s important to ensure that your students are very comfortable solving traditional multi-step equations first. This may seem obvious, but to students who really struggle to work on their own, it is essential for success.

Practice, practice, practice.

Get your students used to working through the struggle. You can model this by correcting your own mistakes and repeatedly asking prompting questions.Your students should feel like they can solve the simple, foundational problems in their sleep before moving on.

Be patient.

Giving your students enough time to think through a problem is essential. Jumping in to help right away only further enables the learned helplessness and causes students to rely on you to solve problems.

It’s not going to be pretty at first and you may face resistance. Just remember that you are ultimately teaching your students resilience and invaluable skills that they will need after high school.