Impediments

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What every student
should know: Seven
learning impediments
and their remedies
Junaid Qadir

M

any well-intentioned
students fa i l to
t hr ive in a
u n i ver sit y
environment,
not due to lack of
effort, but because
of a deficient mindset and/or methodology. While a wide
variety of problems
can result in subopt i ma l lea r n i ng
performance, there
are seven main categories of learning impediments that hinder student
learning with alarming regularity. You may be facing one, or
more, of these impediments. Not to
fret though; each of these debilitating impediments can be surmounted with self-awareness and some
effort, paving the way for enjoyable,
and productive, learning experiences. In this article, I will identify the
offending learning impediments and
propose plausible remedial policies
to counter each.
Is there anyone so wise as
to learn by the experience of
others?
—Voltaire

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPOT.2014.2368793
Date of publication: 6 May 2015

30

n

May/June 2015

image licensed by graphic stock

First impediment:
Having a fixed mind-set
Psychologists have highlighted the
self-enforcing propensity of the
human mind-set in that human optimism and pessimism are both selffulfilling. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you
can’t—you are right.” A fixed mindset, a mind-set model proposed by
researcher Carol Dweck, takes the
pessimistic approach to the concept
of intelligence and skill development.
It characterizes a belief that intelligence or talent are fixed human traits

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that cannot be significantly developed
beyond a certain degree. Students
with fixed mind-sets obsess
over documenting their
intelligence instead of
focusing on developing their intelligence. Many fixed
mind-set students are gifted
students who
have not learned...