During his many years as an educational psychologist, Dr Resnick noticed some commonalities among learners diagnosed with some form of barriers to learning. He found that all of these learners were dependent on some form of help in tasks which they were unsure of, they had low self-esteem, lacked perseverance or had no interest, and as a result, they were afraid to try.
During his literature research, Resnick came across the term ‘learned helplessness‘.
The Impact of Learned Helplessness
Children with learned helplessness tend to lack confidence in tasks they perceive to be challenging, as a result they opt out or ask for help before even trying. This over time affects their sense of self-worth, resulting in inability, or rather unwillingness to try and master new tasks.
The impact of this helplessness leads to a feeling of hopelessness. Often children with learned helplessness give up or fall behind in their academics and compensate by turning to other forms of recognition. They may do this by becoming the class clown or bully, and by the time they reach adolescence, they may try and gain acceptance or recognition by turning to anti-social behaviours such as smoking, drinking, or taking drugs. (1)
Most children are born with an intrinsic passion and need to explore their world. When they fail at a task and their feelings of competence diminish, they then feel no further need to explore, and so become helpless.
With learned helplessness, a child’s competence is almost entirely destroyed. Although initially, they may feel competent about something, if they fail once in that activity, they won’t try it again for fear of failure.
As a learner, autonomy is rarely present in the life of a learned helplessness child. They feel as though they do not have control over their environment because however hard they may have tried in the past, they did not succeed.
This extends to relatedness since they believe they do not relate to the environment in which they find themselves; the learned helplessness child feels as though they do not belong.
Symptoms of Learned Helplessness
Learned helplessness learners function more in the area of extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation relates to external rewards and avoiding punishment. This is done by striving for recognition and conforming to socially accepted behaviour.
It is based on external rewards and the avoidance of threats or punishment. Learned helplessness learners try to avoid failure because of punishment from their teachers. Their main reason for working is to receive external rewards, or a tangible reward like a sticker, a candy, or a token.
The lower the child’s self-esteem and belief in themselves, the more likely it will be that they explain the reason for their failure as a lack of ability and the reason for their success due to some external factor such as having ‘good luck”.
Because they believe that they are not in control of their success, they don’t see the point of persevering with complex tasks or making an effort to study, but rather believe that they need someone to help them.
Can we Help Children with Learned Helplessness?
Reversing this negative trend should be a very important goal for educators, as self-esteem is a far better predictor of academic success than IQ in learners with a barrier to learning. (2)
On the other hand, high achievers are internally motivated. They have realised that personal effort is related to success and as a result are prepared to persevere. They understand that if they don’t perform or fail a test, it is because of their lack of effort and they will take responsibility if they fail or attain bad marks.
They will also take responsibility for their poor performance (“I deserved a D since I chose to go to the movies rather than study”).
This type of helplessness is not necessarily limited to those with a barrier to learning. Average achievers may also not make an effort when posed with a question from the teacher, preferring instead for the teacher to provide the answer.
In Conclusion
This phenomenon of learned helplessness can be overcome through the support and guidance of the educator in making tasks more manageable while helping learners to link their success to their abilities, rather than external factors, thereby enhancing their self-efficacy and self-esteem.
As a consequence, these learners may become more motivated and energised to learn with a new spirit of interest and enthusiasm. When concrete effort is praised by educators, the learners begin to believe that they can meet the challenges of the curriculum. (3)
Bibliography:
(1) Berger (2011) (2) Stipek (1988) (3) Smith (2010)
