How to Help a Student Learn: 4 Common Mistakes

February 03, 2023

Article last edited on February 3, 2020 by Admin

You may be a teacher, a trainer, an educator who sincerely wishes to help his students, especially those who are in difficulty or even fail at school. You even think that these students have potential, but that they are wasting their chances through a process of devaluation or even self-destruction.

You have tried many things, you have changed your strategy, but you are disappointed with the results or these could be much better.

When we want to help a person, here a pupil, the intervention (whatever the form) must result in a change.

Change materializes in a new behavior that lasts over time and leads to real transformations.

How to go about it ? Should we handle the carrot and the stick? Should realistic goals be set for each student and advice given? What does science say?

4 mistakes are commonly made. This is what we will see in this article.

Mistake n°1 – The sanction

If it is possible to obtain behavioral changes via authority (by formulating orders or threats), these are never constant: we certainly obtain the expected behaviors, but which obey the sanction as soon as it disappears, the use of road cameras is a good example: they indeed force motorists to slow down, but they quickly resume their bad habits once the speed camera is passed…

A behavioral study [1] showed the ineffectiveness of sanctions in changing behavior: this is the experience of Gneezy and Rustichini (2000). To fight against the lateness of parents, a childcare center began by penalizing them financially, ie $3 for each delay. Against all expectation, an increase in the number of delays was observed. What explanation? The researchers found that the $3 penalty was seen almost as a right to be late. Once the $3 fare penalty was removed, parents started arriving even later.

Of course, punishment is sometimes necessary. In the context of schooling, sanctioning a student who does not do his work will certainly lead him to the desired result: to work. But as soon as there is no longer the threat of punishment, he will stop or relax his efforts. If the objective is to motivate the student to learn and even to teach him to learn, the sanction or the prospect of a sanction will not be effective.

 Mistake #2 – The reward 

Just like the sanction, it is possible to act on the modification of the behavior by rewarding the individuals (financial reward for example). But again, as soon as the reward is removed, the individual stops producing the desired behavior.

A study conducted on blood donation [3] by researchers Goette and Stutzer (2010) aimed to find out how it was possible to increase the number of donors to deal with a shortage of blood. For this a material reward was given (t-shirt, lottery ticket…) or even with gift cards. Result: the number of donors had not, however, increased.

The experience [2] by Festinger & Carlsmith, (1959) is also instructive: for 1 hour, the subjects have to place on a tray, and with one hand, twelve reels: a repetitive and tedious task, presenting absolutely no interest for the subjects.

Once the tedious task is completed, the researchers ask the subjects to lie about the interest of the experiment by presenting it to other people, as interesting like: ” It was very pleasant, I had fun, I enjoyed it, it was very interesting “. In a first group, the subjects receive $1 when they expose the feeling (obviously a lie) of the experience of the coils. In the second group, the subjects receive $20.

After that, the researchers ask the subjects (in each of the groups) what their real opinion was on the task with the coils. Was the task that boring? The subjects of the first group (having received $1) considered the task more interesting than at the start, and they therefore modified their judgment. The subjects of the 2nd group did not present any change on their real notice of departure: the task was very boring. On the other hand, they indicated that they were motivated to carry out the task because of the remuneration of $20.

Like the punishment, the reward will not bring more change. There will be a motivation for the reward, a motivation which can be reinforced by a possible sanction. But again, there will be no real change. Once the reward and punishment are lifted, the old behaviors will return.

Here again, reward and sanction are at times necessary in education and among students to lead them to learn and acquire knowledge. But there is no question, either, of harboring illusions as to their impact on any change [3].

Mistake #3 – The right intention

It is not enough to have a positive attitude towards an act, an action, for it to be effectively carried out by the person. This question between intention and behavior and especially the gap between the realization, has been the subject of a certain number of researches. For example, Bickman (1972) asked students [4] if according to them he was normal and everyone’s responsibility to pick up a paper from the floor (when the paper was actually seen) ? 94% of students strongly agreed with this idea. Then, Bickman moved on to the real case: of the 506 people questioned who agreed with the idea of ​​picking up a piece of paper, only 8 (or 1.4%) actually picked up a piece of paper lying on the ground in the framework of the research.

Having a positive vision or adhering to an idea does not in any way guarantee the passage to action (even when this action is little, if at all, expensive (like picking up a paper).

To return to our educational context, it is not because a pupil is sincerely convinced that it is necessary to work at school that he will actually start working. It is not because the student is convinced that he must adapt (or in any case review) his working method to succeed, that he will actually do so.

Mistake #4 – Saying and repeating advice

Advice, even the most useful, based on indisputable facts, does not necessarily lead to a change in behavior in the individual you want to help. Besides, weren’t you surprised to see people persevering in a behavior that was harmful to them despite the many warnings and wise advice? It’s human, and many experiments in social psychology show it.

One of the most “famous” [5] is that conducted by Peterson, Kealey, Mann, Marek and Sarason (2000) as part of a smoking prevention program (Hutchinson project). 8,388 children were monitored throughout their schooling (from the equivalent of Elementary Course 2 to Bac + 2).

Half of them were exposed during their school time to no less than 65 interventions by professionals, representing about forty-six hours devoted to tobacco prevention (these risks, consequences, etc.). The other half of the children did not benefit from these interventions.

The objective was as follows: by informing young people of the risks of tobacco from an early age, we considerably reduce the risk that they will smoke later in adulthood. We should therefore expect that young adults who have received no less than sixty-five hours of training on the dangers of tobacco are, in the end, less likely to smoke than those who have not received this training.

However, once in adulthood, the proportion of smokers is the same in the two groups, whether or not the young people have received information and prevention sessions on smoking. Was the information well understood by the group of young adults? The researchers found that this group had acquired real knowledge about smoking and its dangers. And yet this knowledge has not changed their behavior, namely: not to smoke.

Going back to the educational framework, it is not because you try to persuade your students of such and such advantages of a teaching tool that they will use it or put it into practice, and make good use of it. And this, even if the opinion of the pupils is positive, even very positive.

How to have the right behaviors? This is what we will see in a future article, an extract from the book “the 7 learning profiles” published by Eyrolles (2005,2013 and 2019).

[1] Gneezy U. and Rustichini A. “ Pay enough or don’t pay at all », The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2000).

[2] ” Prosocial Motivation and Blood Donations: A Survey of the Empirical Literature – US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health (2010).

[3] Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J.M. Cognitive consequences of forced compliance “. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, (1959).

, and “Differential modulation of cognitive control networks by monetary reward and punishment” January 2019 US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health

[4] Leonard Bickman-” Environmental Attitudes and Actions” – The Journal of Social Psychology -Volume 87, (1972) – Issue 2

[5] Peterson, AV, Kealey, KA, Mann, SL, Marek, PM & Sarason, IG Hutchinson” Smoking Prevention Project: long-term randomized trial in school-based tobacco use prevention-results on smoking n Journal of the National Cancer Institute (2000).

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