Read about the basics of perseverance; what it is and how we behave when it’s working well.
The learning journey is wonderful – peaks and troughs, rollercoaster tickles in the tummy, and that sinking feeling when things don’t go to plan, the opportunity to bring out the tools in your learning kit –tools such as becoming absorbed, noticing detail, collaborating with others, imagining what could be. But Perseverance is key to this journey. Not only so that you can get to the end of the ride, but so that you can enjoy the views and sensations along the way.
It is vital that students are able to get to grips with the knotty emotions of learning, and can view and use them positively as aids to the journey, not as setbacks. Without perseverance little worthwhile learning would ever be achieved.
“Attention can be broken when learning gets blocked, but good learners have learnt the knack of maintaining or quickly re-establishing their concentration when they get stuck or frustrated. The quality of stickability or perseverance is essential if you are going to get to the bottom of something that doesn’t turn out as quickly or easily as you had thought, or hoped.
If you get upset and start to think there is something wrong with you as soon as you get stuck, you are not going to be able to maintain engagement.
Instead, all your energy will go into trying to avoid the uncomfortable feeling, and this may mean drifting off into a daydream, creating a distraction, or blaming somebody else. A great deal of classroom misbehaviour starts this way. If pupils were better equipped to cope emotionally with the inevitable difficulty of learning, they would mess about less. There is a range of things that teachers can do to strengthen pupils’ stickability.
Building Learning Power, Guy Claxton
Perseverance is often undermined by two common and erroneous beliefs. The first is that learning ought to be easy. If learners think that they will either understand something straight away, or not at all, then there is simply no point in persisting and struggling. The second is that bright people pick things up easily, so if you have to try it means you’re not very bright. Clearly the idea that effort must be symptomatic of a lack of ability makes persevering an unpleasant experience. Good learners develop perseverance when their parents and teachers avoid conveying these messages, even unwittingly.”
Extract from Building Learning Power, by Guy Claxton
Effective perseverers have a range of strategies that they use independently when stuck. They exhibit emotional toughness in the face of difficulty and relish learning that is challenging. They form and pursue their own goals with tenacity, and have a range of strategies for maintaining focus if distracted. A well-formed perseverance habit includes being ready willing and able to:
- Enjoy working at the edge of their comfort zone
- Recognise that being stuck is when learning begins, not when it finishes
- Maintain optimism when the going gets tough
- Relish working towards ever more challenging and demanding goals
- Take risks in the pursuit of learning
- Give it ‘one more go’, or come back to it later for another attempt
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