Learning Edges

Finding space between comfort and danger

A common analogy for this is strength training. If you are looking to develop more upper body strength, you might do various weight lifting exercises. If you use weights that are easy and comfortable to lift, you might maintain your current level of strength but you are unlikely to get any stronger. A certain amount of strain and effort is a sign that you are pushing your body to do more. At the same time, lifting too much weight can lead to injury and actually set back your progress. Similarly, if you leave your comfort zone, you are more likely to learn because you are challenging yourself. But once you are so far outside your comfort zone that you feel unsafe, that feeling of danger can not only prevent you from learning in the moment, it can sometimes do more lasting harm to your learning process.

Understanding where your personal boundaries are helps you to be more strategic and effective as a learner. Helping others find their individual learning zone makes you a more strategic and effective teacher.

Different people have different boundaries

When thinking about Learning Zones (also sometimes referred to as Learning Edges), it's important to remember that everyone has the boundaries of their Comfort and Danger Zones drawn differently. In fact, the same person's zones can shift depending on the topic, the context, and any number of other factors.

For example... Some people have been encouraged to play with computers since they were very young, with adults around them who talked about programming and modeled computational thinking. For those people, Computer Science is more likely to feel like familiar territory and well within their Comfort Zone. At the same time, many people enter college having had limited interaction with computers and little or no exposure to computational thinking. If no one has ever introduced you to the concepts and skills you are expected to develop and use in a Computer Science class, it makes sense that they would not be familiar. And it is completely understandable that something unfamiliar would feel outside of your Comfort Zone.

Even the same person learning about the exact same topic can have different Learning Zone boundaries depending on how their day is going and the learning environment in which they find themselves. This is one of the reasons it's so important to create a welcoming and inclusive learning environment. The tone you set can have a significant influence over how far outside their Comfort Zone a student can travel before shifting into a survival mindset.

How our circumstances influence our boundaries

Familiarity tends to increase comfort, so a person's life experiences have a huge impact on what feels safe and what feels dangerous. The interests and values of the adults around us as we grow up help to shape our zones. As we go out into the world on our own, the ways people react to us and the messages they send us about what we're good at and where we belong continue to shape those boundaries.

When we need our Comfort Zone

While the most growth occurs when we push ourselves into our Learning Zone, our Comfort Zone also serves a very important purpose. It is exhausting to spend an extended period of time growing and learning, and it is not sustainable to stay there all the time. Our Comfort Zone is also a place where we can recover when we have found ourselves in our Danger Zone. This is one of the reasons we might seek out a familiar place, person, or activity when we feel mentally or emotionally drained.

It's important for students to leave their Comfort Zone in order to learn. However, if you notice someone frequently retreating back into their Comfort Zone, remember that you don't know their circumstances or what they have experienced recently. Keep in mind that being led out of your Comfort Zone is a very different experience than being forced out of it, and if you push too hard you can potentially do more harm to someone who might already be recovering.