“Desirable Difficulties” for Encoded Learning

When it comes to human development, great teachers take into account difficulty as an imperative variable. The goal, of course, isn’t to overwhelm and diminish the spirit of the learner with great difficulty. Conversely, learning tasks can’t be a slam-dunk, either. We turn up our focus when we’re challenged. Difficulty inspires effort. We actually have a sweet spot when it comes to the level of challenge present and its effect on our learning. 

In 1994, a UCLA psychologist named Robert A. Bjork coined the term, “desirable difficulties” to describe this exact phenomenon. Great students and teachers alike are ultimately interested in the encoding of skills and knowledge. Encoding is a deeply engrained learning experience that has enhanced learning and skill transfer. Immersion into learning via desirable difficulties increases encoding.

How do we know that a learning task qualifies as a learning task? It must meet these three requirements: 

1.   The processing at encoding should be the same process at retrieval. 
2.   The processing at encoding should be the same as the processing during practice. 
3.   The task must be able to be accomplished. Too difficult a task my dissuade the learner and prevent full processing. 

If you’re a student of any discipline, teacher of a craft, and/or a parent of a young student, let this notion of desirable difficulties guide how you structure learning tasks. Struggle isn’t just OK for our students, our children, and ourselves, we need it to encode our most important lessons.  

Bjork might argue that the barbell being heavy, for example, is more important than we think to learn the clean and jerk. Something tells me you wouldn’t encode much just reading about it in a book. Are you enrolled in key desirable difficulties other than fitness?  

Logan Gelbrich   

@functionalcoach

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