Helping students maintain habits: encouraging persistence with behavioural psychology

Students often take three steps forwards then two steps back. Academic progress is not linear: students ‘learn’ and then forget. Changes in student behaviour are no different. We see how hard forming, changing and maintaining habits is in our own lives: we run, eat or sleep better for a while, then old habits reemerge. We see it in students’ lives too, but often, we expect sustained change from a firm conversation and a student’s promise. Even when we help students start a new habit, few will master it immediately: a relapse is almost inevitable. What then?

The evidence suggests habit formation is slow and faltering. One study asked participants to adopt a simple health behaviour after a milestone (a glass of water after lunch, for example). It took 66 days for the habit to become automatic, on average: the fastest participant managed in eighteen days; the slowest was expected to take 254 (Lally et al., 2010). If drinking water habitually takes this long, habits of effort and participation in learning may well take longer: they are more complicated and face more barriers. This study also found that the odd missed day did not undermine habit formation: one step back did not mean all was lost. However, a study of gym attendance among students found that attendance declined as term progressed, and collapsed with a break in routine at the Thanksgiving holiday (Milkman, Minson and Volpp, 2014). Even effective behavioural change interventions show a ‘triangular relapse pattern’ (Wood and Neal, 2016): improvement followed by regress. Their figure, below, shows this pattern in several studies; their point is clear from the shape of the graphs (without reading the text):

So we can expect our students to struggle to form and maintain desirable habits. We no longer expect linear academic progress: we accept, and expect, forgetting, even after a successful lesson. We should expect the same of habits: a student may work harder or behave better one lesson, and regress the next. Isolated success does not mean the habit has stuck; isolated failure does not mean it has disappeared. If a student’s habit slips, we might first check that the essentials of habit formation (described in my last post) are in place:

Behavioural repetition
Context cues
Rewards

But, if they are, how can we ensure students take at least three steps forward, and no more than two steps back?

Build habits gradually

Success is more likely if students reach small goals consistently; rather than aiming for big goals and failing. Doug Lemov (2015) describes focusing on small successes to develop stamina in writing:

Start small and scale up. Ask for a minute the first time. Then a minute-and-a-half. Then two. Try to take the long view. The most important thing is to have students practice being successful at writing steadily through a block of time when asked to, not only because seeing themselves succeed convinces students that they can, but because it makes a habit of writing steadily through the time allotted whenever asked. The idea is that when you say go, they write straight through because they can’t imagine anything else (p.301)!”

If students are struggling to adopt a habit, we may break tasks down further: once students succeed consistently in one element we can build on their success.

Discuss students’ behaviour as habit formation

We may begin by explaining how hard forming habits is, even with good intentions. This should prepare students for the effort needed, and show that a slip doesn’t mean they won’t succeed; it just means forming habits is hard:

“When it’s raining and cold, I struggle to go for my run; you may struggle to maintain this new habit when the situation’s against you.”

This could increase students’ persistence, knowing that they have barriers to overcome. More importantly, it helps us and them to see student behaviour as a process of habit formation, not a stark success or failure. This may help us curb our frustration, maintain our expectations and remind our students what’s possible. When we tell students that there are many barriers to forming habits, it frees us to speak more honestly and productively about those barriers when they struggle. Instead of a sterile conversation:

“Why didn’t you do it?”
“I’ll do it next time.”

We can ask students, “What barriers prevented you from acting on your good intentions?” and genuinely listen to their answers. We can discuss the barriers and distractions students face, and encourage them to ‘reengineer their environment’ (Wood and Neal, 2016), considering cues and context to give themselves the best chance of success, in the hope of hearing sentences like these:

“I’ve realised Tuesday is a busy day for me: I’ll do the homework on Monday evening instead.”
“I think my current seat is too near Alex – can I move somewhere else?”

Discussing behaviour as habit formation helps us focus on what triggered their slip and how they can do better, rather than who’s to blame and their excuses; it helps us help students better.

Preempt moments of weakness

If we can predict moments at which students will struggle, we can preempt them. Students’ habits are more likely to slip at certain moments, such as breaks in routine (reading or homework slips over half term) and periods of pressure (such as exams), when students feel normal routines no longer apply (I’ve written about identifying key moments in schools here). At these moments, the cues and incentives which maintain habits may fall: homework is not being set or checked as normal, for example. We can prepare prompts to keep students on track (like those discussed here), or offer encouragement by emphasising why the task matters, or the social norm of completing it. Alternatively, we may work with students to adapt the habit to these changes:

“When will you practise during the holidays?”
“What are you going to need to do differently during the trip?”
“Who will be your buddy in your new form?”

Offer fresh starts

Breaks in routine also offer excellent moments to reengage students with habits. The beginning of the new term, or year, is a chance for students to forget former failures, and for us to help them redesign the habit, building on those elements which have worked, modifying those which which have not. If commitment or effort has slipped, we can relaunch the habit, with similar elements, but a novel form or name, regenerating enthusiasm and reminding students of the reason for the habit (Milkman, Minson and Volpp, 2014). Or we may change our expectations, the cue or the incentive. We might ask students:

“What has worked well?”
“When have you struggled? What caused this?”
“What aspects of the context might you want to change?”
“How will you make it more likely the habit sticks this term?”

Josh Goodrich has noted that you can “restart things forever”, adding impetus and making modifications until the habit sticks.

Recognise progress

Incremental success is a powerful motivator. Initially, our goals influence our habits, but when we form a habit our goals become less important (it’s a habit, we no longer have to remind ourselves why we’re doing it). Ultimately, we may infer our goals from our habits (Wood and Neal, 2007): we exercise regularly, and so conclude that we’re a healthy person, for example. We can encourage students to reflect on what their new habit says about them:

“You’ve been practising hard all year: how do you feel? What lessons have you learned that you’ll take into the next year?”

Encouraging students to review their successes and reflect on what those habits say about them may help them rethink who they are, concluding ‘I’m a hard worker’, ‘I’m a mathematician’, ‘I’m a learner’.

Conclusion

The research evidence, our own experience, and what we see students doing, combine to illustrate that habits are hard to master: everyone takes three steps forward, then two steps back. Accepting this may help limit our frustration when students’ behaviour slips, permit productive conversations about why this happens, and help us support them to form the habits to which they aspire. Whether through:

Building habits gradually
Discussing habits explicitly
Preempting weakness
Offering fresh starts, or
Recognising progress

we can help students master the habits which matter most. Students’ chances of acting consistently on their good intentions are higher if we use, and share, the psychology of habit formation.

I’m grateful to Ben Piper for his ideas about identifying likely points of failure, and to Lucy Newman for sharing the ideas of her colleagues at Oasis South Bank on where habits go wrong, based on my previous post.

This is a draft excerpt from Habits of success: getting every student learning. It’s available from Amazon & Routledge.