5 Learning Barriers and How to Overcome Them

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The term learning barrier refers to anything that stands in the way of you being able to learn effectively. A person may experience one or more learning barriers throughout their education and lifetime even. For instance, let’s make a supposition. Consider if you are a mathematics student and learning to resolve complex calculus queries but feeling it quite complicated because of the formulas involved. What would you do in such a situation? Not any clue? Let us tell you what to do here! All you need to do is to figure out a solution with the assistance of a limits calculator proposed by calculator-online.net that is specially designed to solve such complex problems in a detailed manner.

You’ve probably noticed some things are more difficult for your students to learn or that they don’t remember anything regardless of how hard they try to engage and learn the matter.

It’s easy to get stressed and worry, but learning barriers are manageable. Scroll down to see the most common obstacles to learning and how to overcome them.

1. Lack of focus and concentration

Absence of focus and concentration troubles all of us, at one point or another. There comes the time when your mind wanders and becomes scattered. A student keeps thinking about many other things except the task at hand. As much as they try to focus and learn, they can’t. For example, they keep reading the notes or material from school or work, but once they’re done they have no idea what they just read.

SOLUTION: To improve focus and concentration they need to minimize all distractions. Try not to have their phone around, avoid opening social media on their computer, and eliminate other things that keep them distracted.

They may want to have a special corner (or room) in their home for work or school. Designate the time reserved for the phone and social media e.g. during the breaks. They shouldn’t give up when they feel they have no concentration. Instead, they should try to focus even harder. Teachers and lecturers may want to do the same thing – keep the classroom free of distractions.

student overcoming learning barriers — Overcoming learning barriers

2. Fear of failure

Nobody likes, or wants, to fail. For some learners, the fear of failure is a major barrier, especially in competitive environments. Everyone wants to shine and be the best. All this can be overwhelming to the point you develop anxiety because you don’t want to fail and disappoint yourself or others. The worse your fear becomes, the more difficult it is to learn and become better. Let’s say you want to learn how to detox, the fear of not being able to achieve it could prevent you from absorbing the information on this matter.

SOLUTION: The healthiest way to overcome this barrier is to simply acknowledge that failing is sometimes inevitable. Failure doesn’t mean the end of the road. Instead, you need to present it as an opportunity to learn, grow, be better, and do more. Once a student takes failure as a learning opportunity and accept that sometimes it’s okay to fail in order to achieve greater success later, they will be able to overcome this fear and learn successfully.

3. Emotional factors

The encouragement we receive from lecturers, managers, and the environment play a role in emotional learning. For example, if you adopt a mindset of “always trying your best” and learning from past failures, you will have a more positive outlook on the ability to learn. This translates to more success when you’re learning.

On the flip side, if the internal voice keeps telling a person that they’re not “good enough” or that there’s no point in trying, they are more likely to underachieve.

SOLUTION: Generally speaking, this type of learning barrier is resolved by setting clear goals and expectations. You should always focus on positives. If you can, you may want to create an encouraging environment that inspires students to keep going. But if you can’t choose the environment where you work, it’s useful to just explain they should keep their mind on expectations they define and encourage them.

Instead of thinking of not being good enough, students should try to adopt a positive mindset on their ability to learn.

4. Poor past experience

Poor past experience is the trickiest learning barrier. Sloppy lectures and online courses, bad teachers and lecturers, and boring material all play a role in shaping poor past experience that prevents a student from dedicating to new things. Why? Negative experiences in the past give distaste for learning.

SOLUTION: The history of bad experiences in the past isn’t something someone can undo. You can’t go back in time and change it. But you can adapt to new learning opportunities. For example, lecturers can strive to create an environment where learners can regularly and safely voice their concerns. Lectures can be more interactive and informative, not just mere presentations of some facts. Learners can use their past poor experiences to change the way they approach new ones. They can also seek assignment help from experts.

5. Personal resistance

Not all people are the same. Some men and women adapt to new learning techniques and strategies easily, whereas others do not. In fact, some learners may believe they’re too old to learn something or they don’t like “modern” methods of learning. All this can make them disengaged. Personal resistance forms a barrier that prevents a person from learning anything, which only aggravates the whole issue.

SOLUTION: If your learning barrier is caused by personal resistance, you may want to be open to new experiences. Avoid thinking the new method of learning or a course is bad just because you’ve never tried it before. At the same time, course lecturers may want to create a positive environment where they address personal resistance and help the learner overcome this barrier.

Methods to learn something are numerous and a person who’s used to a certain strategy is often reluctant to try something new. Without properly addressing this barrier, personal resistance of one person could lead to the disengagement of other persons. Therefore, it’s crucial to help someone articulate their opinion and answer their concerns to create a positive learning environment.

UDL: Reducing Barriers to Learning