Student Boredom: Is Challenge Really the Cause?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why student boredom usually isn’t caused by lack of challenge—and why self-paced learning isn’t the fix.
Key Takeaways
- Challenge Isn't the Main Cause - Dr. Baeder argues the link between boredom and insufficient challenge is much weaker than many educators assume.
- Boredom Has Multiple Sources - Personality, inherently uninteresting content, and teacher delivery all play a bigger role than academic level alone.
- Self-Paced Learning Won't Solve It - Letting everyone work at their own pace, especially in math, would help only a small minority and reduce learning for most students.
- Whole-Class Teaching Still Matters - Students generally learn for a teacher, so abandoning teacher-led instruction in the name of reducing boredom is the wrong move.
- Advanced Options Are a Better Solution - Rather than dismantling the class structure, schools should provide advanced course pathways for students ready to move faster.
Full Transcript
Where does boredom come from, and what should we do about it? There's this idea circulating that students are bored when the material is not at the right level of challenge, and especially when it's not challenging enough. And a lot of people were bored in school, a lot of people were not particularly challenged in school,
so it makes a certain amount of sense to connect the two. But I think that's wrong. I think the connection between challenge and boredom is actually very weak. And I think most boredom comes from other places.
I think one big place boredom comes from is personality, right? In any class, there can be two students who are academically at the same level, and one is bored, and one is not. So I think there's a personality component to boredom that probably explains the majority of it.
Another source of boredom is just some material is boring, right? I learned a lot in zoology about, like, different kinds of worms that live in the ocean, and, like, it was just not interesting material, and it had nothing to do with how challenging it was.
And if you think about...
Challenging reading. Some of the most entertaining books are very easy to read. Some of the best and most satisfying books are difficult to read. I don't think there is any connection between the difficulty of a book and how boring you find it. I think sometimes a more challenging book can be more interesting. Sometimes it can be more boring.
It just depends. I think the relationship between challenge and boredom is very weak. And where people tend to fixate is on math. And they think, well, if I had just been allowed to work at my own pace in math, I wouldn't have been so bored. And I think that's the wrong solution and kind of a wrong diagnosis of the problem. And I hear this idea, oh, let everybody work at their own pace.
Let the students learn at their own pace in math and everything will be better. No, it wouldn't. This is an idea that would work for maybe 5% of students and really only the top students. And those are not the students who are complaining about boredom.
I think what you will see if you let students work at their own pace is most of them just won't do it, right? The tremendous failure of virtual academies, the complete lack of indication that students are willing to work at their own pace should tell us that this is not a good idea for schools.
Schools should not abandon whole-class math teaching in order to solve the problem of boredom, because it's the wrong diagnosis, and students will not learn that way. Students will learn for a teacher. And, of course, teachers can be another source of boredom, right? Not all teachers are equally interesting.
I think we should all strive to be as interesting as we can, to make the material as interesting as we can, to ensure that students understand what we're teaching. But what we should not do is break down the class and say, okay, everybody go learn at your own pace
so you're not bored.
That's not going to fix it, because that's not how learning works. That's not where boredom comes from. And it would result in less learning. So, let me know what you think about where does boredom come from? What should we do about it? I think one thing we should definitely do that I think is behind what a lot of people are saying about letting students learn at their own pace is we should have advanced course options.
If there is no advanced option, if you can never move up in math and you're forced to learn the same material at the same pace as everybody else, well, yes, we should have an advanced class instead of that. But let me know what you think.