How children think and learn, and why they 'fail' in school

Ask a Class 5 child whether 0.25 or 0.5 is bigger, and a surprising number will say 0.25, "because 25 is bigger than 5". The child is not guessing. They are using a rule that has worked for whole numbers all their life. That wrong answer tells the teacher exactly what to teach next, and that idea is at the heart of this part of the CTET syllabus.

The syllabus block "Learning and Pedagogy" begins with "how children think and learn; how and why children 'fail' to achieve success in school performance", and goes on to children's strategies of learning, learning as a social activity, the child as a problem solver and a "scientific investigator", and "alternative conceptions of learning in children, understanding children's 'errors' as significant steps in the learning process". This guide pulls those threads together.

Children are natural learners

Long before school, children learn to walk, talk, sort objects and predict what adults will do, without lessons or marks. They do it by exploring, experimenting, asking and imitating. The child who drops a spoon from a high chair twenty times is running an experiment.

School should build on that curiosity. When it replaces exploration with passive listening and memorising, children learn that learning is something done to them, and many switch off.

Theories of learning at a glance

CTET does not ask for detail on every theory, but it does expect you to recognise each by its key idea and experiment.

Thorndike's three main laws

1. Law of readiness: learning is satisfying when the learner is ready for it, and annoying when forced before readiness.
2. Law of exercise: connections strengthen with use and weaken with disuse.
3. Law of effect: responses followed by satisfaction are strengthened; those followed by discomfort are weakened.

Children's strategies of learning

As children grow, they learn how to learn:

• Rehearsal: repeating information to hold it in memory.
• Organisation: grouping items into categories.
• Elaboration: linking new information to what they already know, or making a picture or story of it.
• Metacognition: thinking about one's own thinking, including knowing what one does not understand and choosing a strategy. John Flavell introduced the term.

A teacher can teach these directly: "How will you remember these five words? Can you group them?"

Alternative conceptions: children's own theories

Children do not arrive empty. They bring ideas built from everyday experience, which are often reasonable but scientifically wrong. These are called alternative conceptions or misconceptions.

Telling the right answer rarely removes a misconception. Children need to test their idea, see it fail, and build a better one: a Piagetian conflict followed by accommodation.

Errors as windows into thinking

A careless slip and a systematic error are different. A systematic error follows a rule, and finding the rule shows the teacher where understanding broke down.

Example 1. A child writes 1/2 + 1/3 = 2/5. The rule: add the tops, add the bottoms. The child is treating fractions as two separate whole numbers. Correct: 1/2 + 1/3 = 3/6 + 2/6 = 5/6. Teach with fraction strips or a roti cut into parts, so the child sees that halves and thirds are different sizes.

Example 2. A child writes 52 − 27 = 35. The rule: in each column, take the smaller digit from the larger (7 − 2 = 5, 5 − 2 = 3). Correct: regroup 52 as 4 tens and 12 ones; 12 − 7 = 5, 4 − 2 = 2, so 25. Teach regrouping with bundles of sticks.

Example 3. A child writes "I eated my lunch." The rule: add -ed for the past. This is overgeneralisation, a sign of active language learning.

How and why children "fail" in school

The quotation marks in the syllabus matter: often it is the school that fails the child. John Holt's book How Children Fail (1964) argued that fear, boredom and confusion make children use strategies to please the teacher rather than to understand. Common reasons:

• Fear: of punishment, ridicule, wrong answers or exams.
• Rote learning: memorising without meaning, so knowledge cannot be applied.
• Disconnection: lessons unrelated to the child's life and experience.
• Language barrier: teaching in a language the child does not yet understand well.
• Mismatch with readiness: content too far above or below the child's level.
• Labelling and low expectations: a child called "weak" often stops trying.
• Unmet needs: hunger, illness, poor sight or hearing, family stress, child labour.
• Unidentified learning disabilities (see learning disabilities).
• One method for all, ignoring individual differences.

The National Curriculum Framework 2005 responded with guiding principles that include connecting knowledge to life outside school, moving away from rote methods, and making examinations more flexible and integrated with classroom life.

Conditions that help children learn

• A classroom free of fear, where questions and mistakes are welcome.
• Tasks that are meaningful and connected to children's lives.
• Activity, play, discussion and group work.
• Time to think, explore and try again.
• Teaching that starts from what children already know.
• Feedback that tells the child what to do next.

Worked classroom questions

Scenario 1

Many children in Class 6 say that a heavy stone falls faster than a light one. The best way to address this is to:

(a) tell them the correct answer and ask them to memorise it
(b) mark the answer wrong in the test
(c) let them predict, drop a large and a small stone from the same height, observe and discuss
(d) ignore it, as it will be taught in higher classes

Best answer: (c). Testing the idea creates conflict and leads to a better concept.

Scenario 2

A teacher notices a child solving every subtraction by taking the smaller digit from the larger in each column. The teacher should:

(a) give fifty more sums for practice
(b) identify the misunderstanding about regrouping and reteach it with concrete materials
(c) conclude the child is careless
(d) move on, since most children understood

Best answer: (b). A systematic error needs targeted reteaching.

Scenario 3

A child who was scolded in front of the class during a reading lesson now feels anxious whenever the reading book is opened. This is best explained by:

(a) insight learning (b) discovery learning (c) the law of exercise (d) classical conditioning

Best answer: (d). The book has become paired with humiliation.

Practice MCQs

Q1. Children's errors are best seen as:

(a) signs of carelessness (b) signs of low intelligence (c) reasons for punishment (d) windows into their thinking

Q2. The puzzle-box experiment with cats is associated with:

(a) Pavlov (b) Skinner (c) Thorndike (d) Köhler

Q3. Learning through a sudden grasp of relationships is called:

(a) insight learning (b) trial and error (c) conditioning (d) imitation

Q4. Thinking about one's own thinking is called:

(a) rehearsal (b) assimilation (c) elaboration (d) metacognition

Q5. "Plants take their food from the soil" is an example of:

(a) an alternative conception (b) a scientific fact (c) a learning disability (d) rote learning

Q6. Which is the most likely reason a child "fails" in school, in the CTET sense?

(a) the child is not born to learn
(b) teaching is disconnected from the child's experience and language
(c) the child asks too many questions
(d) the child plays too much

Q7. Thorndike's law stating that satisfying outcomes strengthen a response is the law of:

(a) readiness (b) exercise (c) effect (d) belongingness

Answers

1. (d).
2. (c).
3. (a). Köhler's chimpanzee studies.
4. (d).
5. (a).
6. (b).
7. (c).

What to do next

• Rewrite the theories table from memory: theorist, experiment, key idea.
• Collect three systematic errors from children's work and write the rule behind each.
• List five reasons children "fail" and one teacher response for each.
• Move on to motivation, which explains why some children keep trying and others stop.