Every teacher has students who seem to disappear during the most important parts of a lesson. They look down when a question is asked, anxiously waiting for another student to answer. If called on, they simply shrug or protect themselves with silence instead of sharing their thinking. It is easy for the adult to read those behaviors as a lack of motivation. While they sometimes signal that students aren't engaging with the material, more often they signal a learner who has decided participating is risky. The student tells themselves secretly, “If I try and still fail, I will have one more piece of evidence that school is not for me.” But it is important not to allow that thinking to sink too deep. Teachers need to show students that they believe they can succeed and will give them the time and appropriate pressure to do so.

Elements IXc and IXd of the Marzano Academies CBE Instructional Model focus on the reluctant learner. Element IXc asks teachers to ask reluctant learners in-depth questions. Element IXd asks teachers to probe incorrect answers with reluctant learners. They are much more than just questioning strategies. They are part of the classroom context teachers create. They communicate who is expected to think, who is worth waiting for, and whose incorrect answers are important enough to examine. In other words, they communicate belief.

Why: Reluctant Learners Need Challenge, Not Protection From Thinking

The folio for Element IXc explains that reluctant learners are often students who have experienced low expectations from teachers, peers, others, and themselves. Over time, these expectations can become self-reinforcing. Students for whom teachers hold higher expectations often receive more complex tasks and more complex questions. Students for whom teachers hold lower expectations often receive fewer opportunities to engage in the difficult thinking that builds capacity.

The teacher may not intend to send that message and may, in fact, believe he or she is being kind. A reluctant learner provides an incorrect or incomplete answer and begins to look uncomfortable, so the teacher asks an easier question or moves on. The moment passes smoothly. The problem is that the hidden message beneath the smoothness is not “I care,” but “I don’t believe.” Students notice who gets the hard questions. They notice whose thinking is pushed and whose thinking is accepted quickly. They notice when the teacher stays with one student’s reasoning but lets another student disappear after a weak response. When reluctant learners are consistently protected from challenge, they may also be protected from the experience of discovering they can actually do difficult things.

That is the connection to efficacy and agency. Design Area IX focuses on whether students believe they can exert control and whether they act on the belief. A learner who has quietly given up on school is not likely to develop agency through encouragement alone. Encouragement helps, but it must be paired with concrete experiences of success. The student has to encounter evidence that he or she can think through difficulty, revise an answer, and contribute to academic work that matters. After all, agency is an individual's perceived ability, based on their capacity, to control their life.

Research on teacher expectations reinforces this point. De Boer, Timmermans, and van der Werf (2018) found that interventions focused on teacher expectations positively affected student achievement. They argue that expectations need to show up in the way teachers interact with students. Believing or saying you have high expectations is not enough. Your actions actually have to make that clear to the person you have high expectations of. How a teacher questions learners is one such interaction.

How: Stay With the Learner Without Creating Embarrassment

Asking in-depth questions of reluctant learners requires more than calling on students who do not usually volunteer.  The teacher has to plan for the kind of thinking students will be asked to do. The IXc folio identifies strategies such as designing complex questions and tasks, providing equal response opportunities, using follow-up questions, using encouragement, using response chaining, and avoiding inappropriate reactions.

Reluctant learners often need the same level of challenge as other students, but they may need a different pathway into the challenge. A teacher might begin with a question that gives the student an entry point and then use follow-up questions to move toward deeper thinking. For example, in a science lesson that will require learners to provide evidence for their conclusions, the teacher might first ask the student to identify an observation. Then the teacher might ask what pattern the student notices. Then the teacher might ask what evidence supports that pattern. The goal is not to make the question easier. The goal is to make the pathway more visible for the learner to follow.

Wait time also matters. Students who are reluctant often need a few seconds to decide whether it is safe to think out loud. A teacher who fills the silence too quickly may unintentionally confirm that the student was not expected to answer anyway. Research on wait time has found that longer pauses are often associated with greater student participation and more developed responses. Wait time works best when it is paired with thoughtful questioning and support.

Encouragement is also important, but it needs to be specific. “Good job” is not enough. A more useful response might be, “Stay with that idea. You started by noticing the relationship between the two variables. Now let’s think about what might explain it.” That kind of statement tells the student two things. Your thinking has value, and I expect you to keep thinking.

Element IXd comes into play when the student’s answer is incorrect. If the teacher ignores the incorrect answer, the student may be spared a moment of discomfort, but the larger message may be that the teacher did not believe the answer was worth examining. And it is not always just the reluctant learner who notices. Other students may come to the same conclusion.

The folio for IXd suggests a better path. Teachers should respond to incorrect answers with gratitude, point out what is correct and what is incorrect, temporarily let students off the hook if they become embarrassed or frustrated, and then re-engage them when appropriate. The temporary part is important. Providing the learner time off the hook to gather their thoughts is being supportive. However, letting the student disappear entirely communicates a lack of confidence in them. A teacher might say, “Thank you for trying that. The first part of your answer is pointing us in the right direction. The part we need to rethink is the cause. Let me rephrase the question.” The class and the learner see that an incorrect answer can still become part of learning.

Research on classroom error management supports this direction. Tulis (2013) found that the way teachers respond to student mistakes is connected to students’ attitudes toward learning from errors. That should not surprise us. Students learn whether mistakes are evidence of failure or invitations to think again by watching how adults respond when mistakes happen.

What: What It Looks Like When Reluctant Learners Are Truly Included

When Elements IXc and IXd are working, reluctant learners are not suddenly transformed into the first students to raise their hands. That may happen for some, but it is not what we look for to determine whether the strategy is working. Instead, watch how the reluctant learner begins to respond before being called on or volunteering to answer. If they usually avoided eye contact when questions were asked, do they begin to stay focused a bit longer? Or maybe the learner who once said, “I don’t know,” begins to ask for help with a complex question without acting embarrassed. These are not small things. They are signs that the classroom context is changing.

At the school level, this work requires more than individual teacher intention. A school can claim to believe all students are capable while still creating daily routines that communicate something different. Therefore, a school needs to look for patterns regarding which students are being encouraged and which are not. Unfortunately, reluctant learners often know the truth of the system before adults do. They know whether they are being invited into difficult thinking or managed around it.

When a teacher asks a reluctant learner an in-depth question, stays with the learner during the struggle, responds carefully to an incorrect answer, and helps the learner revise the thinking, the student hears the adult saying, in action rather than words, “I believe you can think deeply. I am not going to make this easy just because you have struggled before. I am also not going to leave you alone in the struggle.” After all, humans do not develop agency by avoiding hard thinking. They develop agency by encountering difficulty, receiving support, and adjusting their thinking, so they experience success brought on by their actions.

To continue building your understanding of effective, evidence-based, competency-based instructional practices and the full Marzano Academies instructional model, become a member of the Learning Lab. For only $10 per month, Members can access Dr. Marzano’s research Folios, professional learning resources, and practical tools designed to help teachers make competency-based practices work in real classrooms. The Learning Hub also includes Badging Experiences that allow teachers to identify a meaningful professional growth goal, strengthen their classroom routines, and document their growing expertise. Teachers should own their professional learning, and the Learning Hub is built to support that work. You can also sign up for Virtual Office Hours or engage in a CBE Coaching Series with Marzano Academies Faculty to deepen your team’s approach to a personalized, competency-based classroom. Please reach out with any questions.

References

de Boer, H., Timmermans, A. C., & van der Werf, M. P. C. (2018). The effects of teacher expectation interventions on teachers’ expectations and student achievement: Narrative review and meta-analysis. Educational Research and Evaluation, 24(3–5), 180–200. doi:10.1080/13803611.2018.1550834

Marzano, R. J. (2021a). Element IXc: Asking in-depth questions of reluctant learners in a competency-based classroom. Marzano Academies.

Marzano, R. J. (2021b). Element IXd: Probing incorrect answers with reluctant learners in a competency-based classroom. Marzano Academies.

Marzano, R. J., & Abbott, S. D. (2022). Teaching in a competency-based elementary school: The Marzano Academies model. Marzano Resources.

Marzano, R. J., Aschoff, A. S., & Avila, A. (2022). Teaching in a competency-based secondary school: The Marzano Academies model. Marzano Resources.

Marzano, R. J., & Simms, J. A. (2014). Questioning sequences in the classroom. Marzano Research.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils’ intellectual development. Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Shiau, A. Y. A., McWilliams, K., & Williams, S. (2024). The role of wait time during the questioning of children: A systematic review. doi:10.1177/15248380241246793

Tulis, M. (2013). Error management behavior in classrooms: Teachers’ responses to student mistakes. Teaching and Teacher Education, 33, 56–68. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2013.02.003