Educational psychology, in particular Vygotsky notions on Social Cognitivism, offers the opportunity to have a more comprehensive and researched-based framework for learning processes.^[1]

For instance, the notion of “productive struggle” allows a parallelism with Vygotsky’s notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which is meant as the level of challenge /zone at which learning can happen (by not being too easy, leading to boredom, nor too difficult, leading to frustration). Educators should be able to provide a culture in which the ZPD can happen to allow effective learning.^[2]

The notion of “productive struggles” represents a tool thanks to which educators can provide a rightly challenging and inclusive environment for students to learn effectively. As suggested by the University of San Diego Professional and Continuing Education faculty^[3], the first premise is to encourage a culture of problem-solving with a focus on the individual roadmap: when students are encouraged to struggle productively, as they attempt to solve a problem, they will start to ask themselves these questions:

• Does anything jump out at me right away?
• What is the question asking?
• What information is provided?
• What part might give me trouble?^[4]

Additionally, to train interpersonal relationships, peer feedback and collaboration, educators encourage learners to ask collaborative questions to resolve a problem, such as “What are you trying to do?”, “What have you tried already?”, “What would happen if…?”, as suggested in G. Reese’s research.^[5]

In conclusion, the combination of a culture of individual and collaborative problem-solving, productive struggle becomes a strategic educational tool to encourage the independence of learners to prevent frustration, develop a growth mindset to trust the learner’s abilities as examinable and improvable and support recognizing emotional response to both failure and success.^[6]

Moreover, the aforementioned aspects linking to autonomy towards independence, managing emotions and developing competencies are identified as the main vectors of student and purpose development in Denice Hood’s research, suggesting that an early. school application of productive struggle can lead to smoother identity establishment and purpose identification among university students.^[7]