The Skillful Teacher

Understanding Resistance to Learning
One of the most frequent complaints I hear on campuses around the
country is that students aren’t what they were, that they want an
easy grade for no work, that they have no attention span, and that
they lack any intrinsic interest in learning. In this analysis resis-
tance is framed as personal truculence, a choice made by individu-
als who just can’t be bothered to work and who have no natural
aptitude for learning. Now this may be the case with some students,
but as a universal explanation for why students resist learning it’s a
simplistic and somewhat lazy cop-out. The truth is that resistance
is a multilayered and complex phenomenon in which several fac-
tors intersect. In the following section I explore a number of possi-
ble explanations for students’ resistance to learning. The section
begins with factors having to do with the student’s self-image and
rhythm of learning and then moves into an analysis of social factors
and teacher behaviors.