When Struggle Isn’t Growth: How 'Productive Struggle' Became Institutional Neglect

Why students with IEPs are being left behind by a pedagogy that celebrates difficulty but withholds support.

Struggle is not always growth—it’s often harm. Real equity means centring support, not withholding it. When we honour difference and scaffold access, all students thrive. That’s the work.

Introduction

“Productive struggle is not neutral.” That phrase has been echoing in my mind for months now—each time I hear a colleague repeat it in a planning meeting, or see it pasted across the slide deck of yet another curriculum training. The language sounds innocuous enough, even inspiring if you don’t examine it too closely. Struggle builds resilience. Struggle deepens understanding. Struggle leads to joy. That’s the narrative pushed by programmes like Illustrative Mathematics, whose materials are saturated with this framing. But in practice—especially in under-resourced, over-stretched schools like mine—it doesn’t play out that way.

We use the IM curriculum at my school, and the expectation to deliver it with so-called fidelity is relentless. Each training drills the same mantra: don’t intervene too early, let students wrestle, don’t “rescue” them from the discomfort of figuring it out. Teachers are discouraged from offering direct instruction or modelling strategies until students have first been given a chance to “struggle productively.” But what that often looks like, in real classrooms, is students floundering—some quietly shutting down, others acting out, many silently giving up. For students with IEPs, whose learning needs are legally documented and whose success depends on access to targeted instruction, this is not pedagogy. It’s erasure. And when we raise concerns, we’re told we don’t understand the research—or worse, that we’re lowering expectations. But I’ve watched this play out long enough to know: what’s framed as a noble instructional method is often just another way to justify withholding support.

What Productive Struggle Claims to Be

In theory, “productive struggle” is meant to be a cornerstone of deep learning. It’s framed as the sweet spot between too-easy tasks that promote rote thinking and too-difficult challenges that lead to disengagement. According to its champions, allowing students to grapple with complex problems encourages perseverance, nurtures independence, and leads to more meaningful understanding. It’s a philosophy that has made its way into countless training sessions, curriculum documents, and classroom posters. And like many well-intentioned pedagogical trends, it sounds entirely reasonable—on paper.

Illustrative Mathematics, whose curriculum is now used in thousands of classrooms across the United States, describes this struggle as not only necessary, but potentially joyful. In a blog post titled Cultivating Joy in the IM Classroom, they write: “Struggle is not inherently traumatic; it can be joyful, and it is essential for learning.” At first glance, this may seem like a refreshing stance, especially in contrast to more deficit-driven models that focus on compliance and correctness. But it raises an uncomfortable question—one that never seems to be addressed in these glossy, celebratory write-ups: joyful for whom?

Because what is being described here is not struggle in the abstract. It’s struggle within specific conditions—often rigid, high-stakes, under-resourced, and inequitable. When IM refers to joy, it implicitly centres a student who has had mostly positive educational experiences, whose identity has not been pathologised, and who has access to adult support, whether visible or not. But for disabled, neurodivergent, racialised, or linguistically marginalised students, the so-called joy of struggle is often indistinguishable from isolation, frustration, and shame. And for teachers, especially those working in Title I schools, the celebration of this kind of struggle can feel like a demand to look away whilst students drown.

It is not that struggle can never be a part of learning. Of course it can. But for it to be productive, it must be accompanied by trust, support, and access. Without those things, struggle becomes something else entirely. And yet the current push for “fidelity” to IM’s method frequently overrides those nuances. There is little room to say: this student does not need to struggle right now—they need to be taught.

What It Looks Like in Practice—Especially for Disabled Students

In my learning centre, the majority of students I support are gestalt language processors—something almost entirely unrecognised by the American education system, which remains firmly rooted in analytic assumptions about language acquisition. The so-called “Science of Reading” dominates the discourse, framing literacy development as a strictly linear, phonics-driven process, with little to no acknowledgement that for many neurodivergent students—especially autistic ones—language doesn’t unfold in discrete units of sound or syntax. It emerges in chunks, scripts, and patterns, often tied to emotion, experience, and sensory context. These students are not broken analytic learners. They are gestalt learners, and their needs are routinely ignored.

Enter the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum, with its tightly choreographed sequence of “Wh” questions, open-ended discussions, and group problem-solving tasks. Teachers are instructed to keep the pacing brisk, to avoid modelling too early, and to encourage students to articulate their thinking aloud before receiving any direct instruction. But for GLPs, none of this is best practice. Open-ended questions can feel like being asked to answer without having the language to think. Group discussion often favours students who already have analytic processing strengths—and punishes those who don’t. And the insistence that students express their reasoning before they’ve had a chance to observe and internalise patterns through modelling only compounds the barrier.

Because of the pressure to adhere to IM’s prescribed pedagogy, many teachers hesitate to offer support—even when students are visibly floundering. They’ve been trained to interpret struggle as a sign that learning is happening, and intervention as a threat to the process. I’ve watched this dynamic unfold too many times: a student sits in silence, unable to access the language of the task, whilst the teacher circles the room encouraging “productive struggle.” In reality, that student isn’t engaging in a meaningful challenge—they’re experiencing cognitive shutdown. They are being left behind, quietly, because the curriculum said to wait.

For students with IEPs, this is more than just a poor instructional match—it’s a violation of access. Explicit instruction and modelling aren’t “shortcuts” or “crutches”; they are accommodations. Legally required ones. And yet, the curriculum’s structure, combined with a culture of fidelity, encourages teachers to delay or withhold those very supports in the name of preserving the method. The result? Students are not only misunderstood, but actively harmed by practices that claim to be inclusive.

It’s especially insidious because it’s wrapped in the language of equity. Everyone is treated the same. No one gets “extra” help. But sameness isn’t equity—it’s erasure. When the system fails to recognise how different students process language, and how those differences intersect with access to maths instruction, it reinforces a pedagogy of exclusion. And it does so with a smile—claiming to promote rigour, when what it’s really promoting is silence.

The Gaslight Loop: You’re Not Struggling the Right Way

There’s a particular kind of harm that occurs when students are told they should be enjoying something that is actively causing them distress. It doesn’t always come with malice. Often, it arrives wrapped in glossy curriculum materials and enthusiastic training slides. “Struggle is not inherently traumatic,” we’re told. “It can be joyful.” That’s the narrative that underpins much of the Illustrative Mathematics ethos—a belief that if students lean into challenge, if they sit with uncertainty just a little longer, they’ll emerge stronger, more independent, more confident.

But what happens when they don’t?

What happens when the struggle isn’t clarifying—it’s paralysing? When the problem isn’t that the student is unwilling, but that they’ve already hit a wall long before the learning target comes into view?

This is the part we don’t talk about. Because under this model, if you’re not learning, the assumption becomes that you’re not trying hard enough. If you’re not smiling through it, the issue must be your attitude. The problem is never the method—it’s always the learner. I see it in the subtle ways students begin to turn on themselves. “I’m just not good at maths.” “I always mess this up.” “Everyone else gets it, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” That’s not self-awareness. That’s internalised failure.

And it’s not coming from nowhere.

This is what happens when we frame distress as evidence of progress. When we celebrate struggle in the abstract without acknowledging that for some students—particularly disabled, neurodivergent, or multilingual learners—what’s being called “productive” is simply overwhelming. They are not experiencing joy. They are experiencing abandonment. And then being told to find joy in it.

That’s gaslighting.

It’s the erasure of the student’s emotional reality in service of a predetermined instructional story. It tells them, again and again, that their pain is just part of the process. That if they would only push through, they’d find the joy on the other side. But for many of my students, that “other side” never comes. What does come is silence, withdrawal, or behaviour that gets labelled defiant, when in truth it’s just the body’s way of saying: this hurts.

When a student is drowning, and the system insists they’re swimming, the issue isn’t that they need better form. The issue is that someone needs to throw them a lifeline. Not later. Not after the lesson. Now. Because there is no joy in flailing. Only exhaustion.

Curriculum as Compliance: The Institutional Nature of This Harm

Illustrative Mathematics is not just a curriculum—it’s a culture. And like many cultures built around a tightly packaged brand of pedagogy, it comes with its own language, rituals, and unspoken rules. Teachers are trained not just to use the materials, but to deliver them with “fidelity”—a word that shows up in almost every training, often uncritically, as though alignment with the programme were itself a moral imperative. The implication is clear: deviation means you’re doing it wrong.

But what does fidelity mean when students are struggling—not in the way the programme anticipates, but in ways that leave them shut down, unsupported, or outright excluded?

The message from training sessions is often one-directional: trust the process, don’t intervene too soon, let the students do the heavy lifting. Teachers are encouraged to delay modelling, to refrain from offering too much language, and to let discomfort sit. These practices aren’t suggestions—they’re directives. And in many districts, including mine, the pressure to conform to this model overrides nearly everything else, including our legal and ethical responsibilities to students with disabilities.

I’ve seen it happen again and again. A teacher recognises that a student isn’t accessing the task. They know what would help—some structured language, a worked example, maybe even a moment of one-on-one clarification. But they hesitate. The pacing guide says to move on. The coaching notes warn against “over-scaffolding.” The training says struggle is good. And so the student is left to flounder, and the teacher is left to pretend that this is how learning works.

When curriculum becomes compliance, we stop seeing students. We start seeing only fidelity checkpoints. And this is where the harm becomes institutional. Because whilst individual teachers may want to adapt, may want to slow down or support more, the system they’re working within punishes deviation. The idea that one could reconfigure the lesson to meet the actual students in the room is treated not as responsive teaching, but as betrayal.

This isn’t just a philosophical disagreement—it has real consequences. When fidelity to curriculum trumps student need, particularly the needs outlined in IEPs, we are no longer engaging in best practice. We are violating access. We are institutionalising neglect and calling it rigour. And the worst part is, it’s all done with the smiling reassurance that this is equity. That we’re finally holding everyone to the same high standard. But sameness is not equity. Fidelity is not justice. And students are not data points in a pacing guide.

What Our Students Actually Need

What our students actually need is not mystery, not ambiguity, and certainly not curated confusion disguised as rigour. They need instruction that is clear, accessible, and responsive to how they learn—not how a pacing guide says they should. They need to see concepts modelled, language unpacked, patterns made visible, and thinking made tangible. And above all, they need adults who are willing to adjust instruction to fit the learner, not force the learner to adjust to the instruction.

For the students I support—most of whom are GLPs—this means stepping away from “student-led discourse” and toward intentional, responsive modelling. It means recognising that “Wh” questions like “What pattern did you notice?” or “How do you know?” can create cognitive gridlock for students who haven’t yet developed the analytic structures to answer in that way. It means understanding that scripts and echolalia are not impediments to reasoning, but forms of communication that need to be honoured, echoed, and extended.

And yet, the guidance for students with disabilities in the average Illustrative Mathematics lesson plan offers little more than a vague suggestion to provide physical manipulatives or create a visual display of terms. There’s no mention of alternative input methods, no space for modelling language with augmentative supports, and no real understanding of how students may process information differently. The accessibility section reads like a checklist, not a design principle. It assumes conceptual gaps, not language processing differences. It confuses material access with cognitive access.

When I teach this content, I begin by anchoring the vocabulary in something concrete, offering multiple entry points into the concept of a sequence. I use visuals, yes—but also scripted language supports, sentence frames, and whole-class modelling of the recursive logic behind a task. I narrate my thinking aloud, step by step, and I don’t withhold the “answer” to preserve a pedagogical illusion of discovery. Discovery only happens when the learner is securely connected to the language of the task. Anything less is just a guessing game with a power imbalance.

This isn’t “dumbing it down.” It’s teaching.

And legally, it’s also required. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandates access—not just physical presence in the room, but actual access to the content, delivered in a way that matches the student's learning profile. Universal Design for Learning supports this, as does trauma-informed pedagogy, which reminds us that safety—not struggle—is the foundation of real learning. When we teach with clarity and compassion, we don’t lower the bar—we remove the barriers.

Because no student learns better by being left to flounder. No child finds joy in being confused and unsupported. And no curriculum, no matter how research-based or beautifully formatted, should come before the needs of the humans in the room.

Final thoughts …

Struggle is not always growth. Sometimes, it’s harm. And when we romanticise struggle—when we insist it is character-building, joyful, or necessary—we risk recreating the very systems we claim to challenge. In classrooms shaped by colonial logic, white supremacist values, and neoliberal assumptions about merit and effort, the call to “let them struggle” becomes a quiet justification for abandonment. It frames access as something to be earned through pain. It casts support as weakness. And it tells those who are already furthest from belonging that if they want to stay, they’ll have to fight their way in.

But students are not settlers on the frontier of knowledge, proving their worth through suffering. They are not bootstrapping their way into understanding. They are children—many of them disabled, neurodivergent, racialised, multilingual—navigating systems that were never designed with them in mind. To ask them to perform joy in the face of struggle is not pedagogy. It is gaslighting.

A decolonial approach to teaching refuses this. It does not demand sameness. It recognises that struggle without support is not empowering—it is retraumatising. It centres interdependence, not independence. It makes room for varied ways of knowing, speaking, learning, and being. And when we commit to that—to teaching in ways that honour difference and scaffold access—we don’t just serve the “struggling” students. We serve all students. Because when the margins are made central, everyone benefits. That is what real equity looks like. And that is the work.

—Disclaimer—

The views expressed here are entirely my own and do not reflect those of my employer or colleagues. This critique is not new—I’ve been raising these concerns in person since first encountering this curriculum ... which is probably why I’m not invited to planning meetings anymore …