dot-ed:

Call it the “learning paradox”: the more you struggle and even fail while you’re trying to master new information, the better you’re likely to recall and apply that information later. The learning paradox is at the heart of “productive failure,” a phenomenon identified by Manu Kapur, a researcher at the Learning Sciences Lab at the National Institute of Education of Singapore […]

Kapur has identified three conditions that promote this kind of beneficial struggle.

1. First, choose problems to work on that “challenge but do not frustrate.” 
2. Second, provide learners with opportunities to explain and elaborate on what they’re doing. 
3. Third, give learners the chance to compare and contrast good and bad solutions to the problems. 

And to those students and workers who protest this tough-love teaching style: you’ll thank me later.

I’m glad to read this. It supports our problem solving approach in mathematics. I see it in my classroom, and in my students faces, I always like to have research to back up my arguments.