Assessing and Helping Challenging Students: Part One, Why Do Some Students Have Difficulty Learning?

Abstract

When students struggle with routine assignments and fall behind classmates, a busy teacher may pigeonhole them as slow, give up on them, or become frustrated from failed efforts to bring them up to speed. Well-intentioned efforts to help struggling students by providing repetitions of the same experiences may fail because the specific cause of the sub-par performance was not identified. Six potential causes of inadequate student performance can serve as a diagnostic framework to help teachers pinpoint why a student is struggling academically: 1) cognitive factors, including poorly integrated, compartmentalized information, poor metacognition that hinders the student's ability to monitor and self-correct performance, bona fide learning disabilities that require professional assessment and treatment, and sensory-perceptual difficulties that may hinder performance in certain health care disciplines; 2) ineffective study habits, which are more common among professional students than faculty realize; 3) an inadequate educational experience (unclear objectives, poorly organized instruction, absence of coaching and timely feedback) or a punitive environment in which students avoid approaching instructors for assistance; 4) distraction due to nonacademic issues such as social relationships, health of a spouse, or employment; 5) dysfunctional levels of defensiveness that hinder student-teacher communication; and 6) underlying medical conditions that may affect student attentiveness, motivation, energy, and emotional balance. The objective of this article is to help faculty recognize potential underlying causes of a student's learning problems. Strategies for helping the academically struggling student are also introduced for several of these etiologies.

Changes in Educational Methodologies in Predoctoral Dental Education: Finding the Perfect Intersection

“…Second, readers will understand that when a “perfect intersection” of student, teacher, and environment conditions occurs, learners can master objectives equally well with a wide variety of educational techniques, assuming adept teacher implementation or promotion of particular strategies that are associated with enhancement of learning, shown in Table 1, 2 and desirable conditions among students: strong intrinsic motivation, a disposition to seek answers to questions and explore uncertainties, manageable levels of distraction, diversion, and anxiety, effective study habits, and environmental conditions conducive to learning. Table 2 distinguishes characteristic study habits and other behaviors of high‐achieving and underachieving students 3 …”

“…Some of these factors are difficult to measure or link with confidence to an outcome, and many others cancel each other out. For example, dental school teachers can be individually or collectively innovative and effective in the classroom, lab, or clinic, but their exemplary coaching and mentoring efforts can be completely overwhelmed by a “competitive curriculum” (more about this below) that diverts students’ attention, overwhelms their ability to study coherently, and forces them to backburner certain courses and other learning experiences 3 …”

“…And how are we able to communicate our thoughts to others? Another mystery, less theological in nature but just as profound for teachers, is why in any group of students a few individuals who have seemingly equivalent abilities and incentives perform less well than others or deviate so dramatically from the norms of expected behavior that they become labeled as problem students 3 …”

An Interactive Session to Help Faculty Manage Difficult Learner Behaviors in the Didactic Setting

“…10 Rather than the assessment being the differential diagnosis of the patient, it is the differential diagnosis of the learner in difficulty, including the potential underlying etiologies of why the learner may be demonstrating behaviors that disrupt the learning environment, a vital step in correctly diagnosing the learner. 11–12 Just as with patient care, as more information comes to light (in this case, through discussion with the learner), the rank order of the differential diagnosis changes, as does the plan for improvement going forward.…”

“…We incorporated previous techniques for managing difficult learning situations known as SOAP (subjective, objective, assessment, plan), as well as the technique of advocacy-inquiry for the one-on-one conversation with the learner afterwards, to identify the underlying reason for the learner's behavior. 10,11…”