The Learning Pit: a guide for teachers
What is the learning pit, and how can teachers use it to help children overcome classroom challenges?
What is a learning pit?
The Learning Pit, developed by James Nottingham in 2007, offers a simple but effective way to describe the ups and downs of real learning. It helps both students and teachers understand that deep learning isn’t a smooth or straightforward journey — it’s a process that often begins with curiosity but quickly shifts into challenge, confusion, and self-questioning before finally emerging into greater understanding and confidence. This visual metaphor allows learners to see that struggle is not only normal but necessary.
At the heart of the Learning Pit is the idea that encountering difficulty is part of thinking deeply. When students face new concepts that conflict with their existing knowledge, they enter the pit — a space of uncertainty where questions outnumber answers. This intellectual discomfort drives deeper thinking, prompting students to compare ideas, identify contradictions, and ultimately combine new and existing knowledge to build a more complete understanding.
The Learning Pit is more than just a classroom graphic — it’s a way to promote positive learning habits such as resilience, perseverance, and collaborative problem-solving. By normalising struggle, the model helps students develop a growth mindset, where they come to see challenge as a natural and valuable part of learning, rather than something to avoid.
In schools, the Learning Pit can also be used as a shared language for learning, allowing teachers and students to talk about the emotions and strategies associated with deep learning. When embedded into lessons, it supports critical thinking, questioning, and independent learning — key aims of the National Curriculum. By stepping into the pit and climbing out the other side, learners don’t just master individual concepts — they build the habits and confidence to approach future challenges with curiosity and resilience.
What are the different stages of James Nottingham’s learning challenge?
The learning pit is part of what James Nottingham called a learning challenge. The learning challenge is developed within a classroom community to help students normalise challenges, reflect, show resilience and create a growth mindset. Its main purpose is to develop metacognitive skills in the learners and to encourage them to ask an array of questions and reflect. A learning challenge will advance students' understanding from the surface level to the deeper level. According to James Nottingham, children must not only ask complex questions about the ideas that are presented to them, but they must have the ability to question their thinking as well. This will lead to critical thinking skills in the students. James Nottingham's teaching framework has four stages of Learning Challenge.
Stage 1. Concept: The Learning Challenge starts with a learning objective (or concept). The objective may come from the classroom teachers, conversation, media, classroom resources, observations or national curriculum. At this stage, the learner is presented with an issue or concept that he already has a basic idea or surface-level understanding of.
Stage 2. Conflict (Also addressed as the learning pit!): This is a stage of cognitive conflict, where the learner is put into the learning pit. At this stage, an array of questions about a challenging task is asked from the learner. It is a challenging stage, where children must show deep thinking leading to a deeper understanding. The main aspect of the Learning Challenge is to get learners "into the pit” by establishing cognitive conflict in minds of students. The purposeful creation of a dilemma makes the Learning Challenge a useful model for inquiry and challenge. Regular experience of cognitive conflict helps to create a Growth Mindset. Learning pits are useful places because they indicate that the children have enhanced understanding of the concept, and now have more complex questions about the concept. After finding answers to their questions, learners can come out of the pit and move towards the next stage of learning.
Stage 3. Construct: At this stage, learners begin to construct meaning from the previous learning. Learners will start to make connections between some ideas while considering various options, viewpoints and defining cause and effect. At this stage, students are likely to find more clarity on the concept, alongside some degree of revelation. For this reason, the student must experience a relatively uncomfortable conflict stage, so that they can develop a much deeper understanding of the concept.
Stage 4. Consider: As the students have already understood the concept more deeply, the clarity of concept in stage 4 enables them to reflect on their learning process. This is a deep learning stage where the learner connects a lot of concepts and answers. After considering how they moved from one stage to the other stage, they can use the same strategy to face other learning challenges and apply the new understanding to another context. By doing so, learners will create a deep understanding of the significance of learning pits.
How does the learning pit fulfil the everyday classroom needs of students?
Getting a child into (and out!) of the learning pit allows them to:
- First, receive the knowledge that is considered necessary;
- Identify and understand the need for creative thinking;
- Show deeper learning of a range of key skills and concepts and apply them in a variety of different lessons.
To accelerate the learning process students are taught how to respond to challenging learning. The ‘learning pit’ created by James Nottingham help children understand the learning process. When students are not able to understand new and difficult concepts, this approach can be used by the teachers to encourage students to be resilient in their learning, and apply deep thinking skills and a wide range of options to find the answer.
Jill Nottingham, along with the Co-Author James Nottingham stated that the learning challenge is all about the idea of getting learners to question, wonder and challenge together. For them, learning experiences must create an ‘intellectual dilemma’ and a ‘cognitive wobble’ so that the learners can learn more.
What are the benefits of using the Learning Pit?
Following are the main benefits of using the Learning Pit in student learning:
- The Learning Pit is one of the most effective ways to encourage students to come out of their comfort zone.
- Knowing why, when and how to apply challenge with learning allows students to move from basic academic level to full-blown learning experience;
- Collaborative thinking in a safe atmosphere of classroom practice help students to improve their emotional and social skills;
- Learning pits help to develop skills of connection, inference, reasoning and positive behaviour for learning;
- A challenging classroom culture helps students to learn complex concepts and builds a holistic understanding of the surrounding world;
- Learning pits provide encouragement during times of conflict;
- They demonstrate how confusion and frustration are a normal component of the learning process; and
- The learning pit defines the steps that can be taken to move from basic understanding to deep student thinking.
Developing metacognitive skills is key to success in the learning pit. These skills involve being aware of one's own thought processes and learning strategies, and being able to adjust them as needed. Students who develop metacognitive skills are better equipped to tackle challenges and overcome obstacles in their learning journey.
Teachers can help students develop these skills by encouraging them to reflect on their learning, asking questions that promote critical thinking, and providing opportunities for self-assessment. By fostering metacognitive skills, teachers can empower their students to take ownership of their learning and become lifelong learners.
Final thoughts on the Learning Pit
In a society where students are habitual of getting things done quickly, it can be difficult to teach students how to overcome challenges. Today's students have the technology, access to learning books and other resources. Easy access to such educational resources is likely to change the attitude of children and help them to learn anything without any fear of failure.
In this situation, it can be very challenging for the teachers to keep students motivated to build complex understanding. It is especially true when students can get frustrated, find something as an impossible task, feel they’ve failed, or have a habit of giving up soon. In those times of distress, the learning challenge helps students to develop a growth mindset and helps them to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Active learning is a key component in helping students overcome challenges and develop a growth mindset. By engaging students in hands-on activities and encouraging them to ask questions and explore different perspectives, teachers can help students build complex understanding and develop the skills they need to navigate the learning pit.
Active learning also helps to keep students motivated and engaged, as they are actively participating in the learning process and taking ownership of their own learning. Ultimately, by embracing the learning pit and using active learning strategies, students can develop the resilience and perseverance they need to succeed in school and beyond.
Further Research on Growth Mindset Strategies
The Learning Pit model emphasizes that deep learning happens when students experience cognitive conflict, grapple with uncertainty, and ultimately construct new understanding through challenge and reflection. The following studies explore the key principles underpinning the Learning Pit, highlighting the importance of productive struggle, feedback, and guided support in fostering deeper learning.
1. Dweck (2006) – Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
This foundational study on growth mindset underpins the Learning Pit principle that struggle and challenge are essential for developing resilience and deeper understanding. Dweck’s work demonstrated that students who embraced challenge and effort as part of the learning process showed greater perseverance and learning gains compared to those who avoided challenges or perceived struggle as a sign of failure.
Key Principle: Embracing cognitive conflict as part of deep learning and personal growth.
2. Vygotsky (1978) – Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes
Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) strongly aligns with the Learning Pit Model. It emphasizes that learning happens most effectively when students are pushed slightly beyond their comfort zone — needing support to navigate uncertainty but ultimately developing deeper understanding through social interaction and scaffolded guidance.
Key Principle: Learning happens when students grapple with new concepts at the edge of their current abilities.
3. Bjork & Bjork (1992) – Desirable Difficulties in Learning
This empirical study demonstrated that introducing desirable difficulties (tasks that are challenging but achievable) enhances long-term retention and understanding. Nottingham's Learning Pit mirrors this principle by encouraging students to struggle productively before achieving clarity.
Key Principle: Productive struggle enhances retention, conceptual mastery, and cognitive flexibility.
4. Hattie & Timperley (2007) – The Power of Feedback
This meta-analysis highlighted the importance of feedback during struggle — a core part of the Learning Pit process. Effective feedback helps learners understand their position within the struggle (in the pit) and provides guidance to move toward deeper understanding.
Key Principle: Timely, specific feedback is essential for guiding students through cognitive conflict.
5. Perkins (1999) – The Many Faces of Constructivism
Perkins’ exploration of constructivist learning ties directly into the Learning Pit, emphasizing that learners construct meaning when they actively engage with challenging material, reconsider their misconceptions, and develop new understandings through reflection and peer dialogue.
Key Principle: Deep learning occurs when students confront cognitive dissonance and revise existing schemas.