As a teacher, you may experience a child exhibiting learned helplessness. If you’ve ever heard, “I can’t do this,” “I don’t even care,”I can’t do it, just show me what to do,” or “I’m not good at this” then you’ve experienced learned helplessness within a student.
Learned helplessness occurs when a child repeatedly experiences failure or lack of control over their environment, leading them to believe that their efforts will not change outcomes. It also directly impacts a student’s critical thinking skills, meaning it reduces a child’s problem solving persistence, lowers a child’s confidence in reasoning, and limits their curiosity and questioning.
And as students get older, it becomes more difficult for teachers to help students break through the learned helplessness and increase their critical thinking skills. And, too, without the help and collaboration from parents at home, it can be difficult to see a break through in the classroom… making teaching more difficult.
But why is knowing about this helpful for teachers? Learning about learned helplessness is crucial for teachers because it directly impacts student motivation, academic success, and emotional well-being. When students believe their efforts don’t matter, they stop trying—which can lead to long-term struggles in learning, confidence, and independence.
To support a child experiencing learned helplessness, you must first recognize the signs of learned helplessness, then implement a structured approach to rebuild confidence, promote persistence, and encourage critical thinking.
So what does that look like?
As you are working with this student to increase their critical thinking skills, remain in contact with the child’s IEP team – namely the child’s family. Their support and work at home will have a direct impact on the success you see in the classroom.
Increase activities that promote problem solving, like “what would you do?” games. You can present real life or imaginary situations, or have students take turns coming up with the scenario, to encourages students to analyze, evaluate, and develop solutions independently.
Increase deductive reasoning by playing games like 20 questions. Students can take turns thinking of an object, while the rest of the class asks questions about the object to try and figure out what it is. These types of games build logical reasoning, questioning strategies, and categorization skills.
Increase logical thinking and collaboration by using escape rooms. Set up puzzles, clues, and riddles that your students must solve to escape or unlock a mystery object or reward. This type of activity encourages teamwork, problem-solving, and persistence.
Increase overall thinking and creativity by uses STEM activities in your classroom. STEM activities promote experimentation, engineering skills, and persistence. To further increase creativity and communication, you can start a story chain; this is where you or a student would begin a story with one sentence, and then the next person would add on to the story with another sentence or two… and so on. These types of activities help develop sequencing, creativity, and adaptability.
Increase categorization and justification by giving students a list or images of 3-4 objects and asking students to choose which one does not belong. This type of activity encourages classification, reasoning, and justification.
Increase lateral thinking and reasoning by having a daily riddle in your classroom. Not only would this be a fun brain break activity for students, but it would also encourage students to think out-of-the-box and perseverance.
Most of the activities above are low-prep and can be utilized at home or in the classroom to increase critical thinking skills. Plus, they’re all games that students won’t even realize they are learning.
When a student exhibits learned helplessness, the goal is to encourage effort, persistence, and problem-solving while avoiding language that reinforces their sense of failure or dependence.
If left unaddressed, learned helplessness can impact a child’s academic achievement, critical thinking, and long-term resilience. Recognizing these signs early allows teachers to intervene with strategies that build confidence, persistence, and problem-solving skills.
By systematically breaking down tasks, reframing failures, and fostering a growth mindset, teachers can help children move from helplessness to empowerment—building persistence, critical thinking, and self-belief that lasts a lifetime.
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