CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

6 Reasons for Students Resistance to Participation in Class 

Last Updated 26 October 2023/ By Zineb DJOUB

What are the most common reasons for students resistance to participation in class?

In each classroom, there are students who refuse to participate and get involved in their learning process. This annoys us as teachers because it makes us feel that what we are doing is alien to those students and we will never reach out to them.

Ignoring those and focusing only on active students is not the proper way to react in such situations. Rather, we have to understand the reasons that make our students passive and refuse to take part in their learning. This can support us to encourage their participation and maximize more learning opportunities for them.

To support you in achieving this goal, here are 6 reasons for students’ resistance to participation in class along with suggested ways to deal with them.

1. Personality Traits

Resistance to participation in class can be due to students’ personalities. This plays a great role in dictating students’ decisions and behaviours in learning. Introversion and shyness can lie behind such resistance.

Introverted students who feel more connected to their inward thoughts and feelings, prefer to stay away from the crowd, listen to others, and concentrate. These students are more likely to stay silent in your classes.

Shy students are those who dread being at the centre of attention because of their fear of negative judgment by others.

What makes shy students different from introverted students?

If you ask a shy student to participate you’ll notice that he gets worried and perplexed and he may even avoid eye contact with you. Even if he’s got the answer, you can just get a few words from him. With an introverted student, you may not notice that panic and anxiety as with the shy one.

Still, we have to admit that both introverted and shy students would say ‘no’ to participation in class. So, what could you do here?

When it comes to students’ personalities it becomes really tough to get what you want. Yet, there is always a way to make these students speak.

Shy students need to feel more secure and good about themselves. So, provide them with a healthy learning atmosphere where they can speak up and make mistakes. Your role here is to facilitate, motivate students and foster collaboration and empathy among them.

Provide them with opportunities to experience success. Involve them in tasks of their own interests and help them achieve them. Praise their efforts and success.

Avoid making them ‘victims’ by pointing at them. This will make them more anxious. Instead, pair them up or put them into groups where they can work together, take turns, and feel more supported by others.

For introverted students, you need to help them experience and enjoy the social aspect of learning. So, pair them up with extroverted students and create positive competition to make them speak.

Because introverts are good listeners and like concentrating, you can ask them more cognitively demanding questions. Use proper prompts to make them speak and give them time to think over those questions ( To learn more, read Strategic Questioning: What every teacher needs to boost students’ learning).

Also, assign individual tasks and ask them to present them in class to discuss and share their ideas with others.

Both introverted and shy students can make a valuable contribution to their own learning. Do not limit their participation to asking and/or answering questions in class, but give them more opportunities to take their learning beyond the classroom, and feel free to practise it in different ways. Doing projects, writing reports, and creating videos, are examples of the kind of learning opportunities these students need.

2. It’s a question of time

Participating in class is a risk-taking process where students’ attention, energy, and self-determination are required. Being active in learning may seem easy for us while for most students it is an attempt full of assumptions, doubts, and fear.

Taking such a risk may not seem an easy decision to make for students mainly at the beginning of the school year since they still do not know what kind of teachers they have.

Being skeptical of your reaction to their responses or initiation, they will hesitate to say a word even if they have a lot of ideas to share.

So, students’ participation can be a matter of time. If your students are reluctant to participate, do not stress out or feel down. Be patient, because students need to be familiar with you and mostly feel more comfortable voicing their ideas.

Do not force them to speak. Show them clearly that you like listening to them, their ideas do really matter to you and they make a great difference to their learning.

Call them by their names and use prompts to encourage them to speak even a few words. Correct their mistakes where necessary and praise their efforts and achievements.

Talk to them after class about their interests and concerns. You will see a great difference in their participation.

3. ‘Not worth doing’

The beliefs students hold about their learning process are pertinent because they shape their learning attitudes. If a student sees participation in class as worthless to their learning goals, he will not care about saying a word.

For some students, grades are what counts most in learning. So, they prefer keeping the information for themselves, avoiding sharing with and showing others what they’ve learned.

Such a selfish act is reinforced by the belief that participation would serve nothing: ‘It is but a waste of time and energy, the things I need to preserve for my exams and tests’.

So, even if they have answers to your questions or fruitful ideas to add to your lessons, these types of students will be watching instead of acting in the classroom.

If we want to encourage students’ participation in class, we have to give it much more importance in the teaching-learning process. How?

• Show clearly its value to students’ learning progress. Raise their awareness of the need to contribute to their own learning whether through asking, and answering questions, initiating ideas, or sharing materials and resources with others.
• Make students’ participation an integral part of their learning. This is by providing them with a variety of opportunities to voice their ideas and make choices.
• Show them that they are taking part in your teaching and their contributions are of great value. Listen to their suggestions and take their ideas and choices into account to make further decisions and plans.
• Praise and reward the efforts of those students who participate and keep on encouraging the rest to get more involved.

4. Previous learning experience

Another reason for students’ resistance to participation relates to their previous learning experience. Students who have been humiliated by their teachers because of their mistakes and have been laughed at by their teachers, and/or classmates are more likely to have a negative stance toward participation.

Such a learning experience, may not only lead to that refusal but also to a lack of self-confidence in students’ abilities to speak up and share their ideas with others.

It is important to note that these students are not shy because their fear of making mistakes is not innate or part of their personality traits, but has developed out of their previous learning experiences. It is a kind of response to avoid experiencing again frustration.

Experiencing failure in the past can also result in students’ lack of self-confidence and the conviction that they are unable to reach success, so failure is inevitable.

To support your students to feel good about themselves and overcome those uneasy moments of self-doubt, hesitation, and avoidance of others, you need to enhance their self-esteem.

• Help them experience success and enjoy their self-achievement.
• Talk to them about their potential. Even if they are not good at your subject matter, support them to trust themselves and their ability to make progress. Equip them with the tools to achieve that. Listen, listen, and listen to their fears and support them to overcome them.
• Embrace the culture of learning through mistakes, nudge them to do better, and never give up. Value their contributions and keep encouraging them.

5. Devaluing teaching and learning

When the teaching content and materials seem irrelevant to students, they show no interest in getting involved.

We know that such content and materials need to match students’ interests and needs. But, because these differ from one student to another, we may not meet all of them.

It is worth noting here that we are not just concerned with selecting the kind of tasks and materials our students need and prefer. But we need to consider as well the appropriate level of challenge for them.

A common situation that I often hear from my in-service teachers is having students who see their teaching as irrelevant. This is because they need more challenging and thought-provoking tasks. As a result, they devalue teaching and learning, refuse to do tasks, and get attentive in class.

So, what to do here?

• First, you need to understand the reason why that student perceives your work as irrelevant. Then look for what he needs and wants to learn instead. You need to talk individually to him, devote time to that, and listen attentively to understand that reason.
• Do more personalized learning. Provide variety within the same task so that students can do tasks that match their needs and interests. Also, bring a variety of tasks; avoid sticking to the same type and check how your students get on with them.
• Provide your students with the choice. They can select from your suggested materials and/ or bring their own into the classroom. So, let them make decisions. This will help you know what types of students you have and thus how you need to improve your instructions.

6. Having nothing to say

Having nothing to say could be one of the reasons for students’ resistance to participation in class.

After explaining our lesson, we raise questions to check for understanding and elaborate more on the tackled points. We expect our students to react and provide us with the necessary feedback.

However, students will not participate in raising questions or holding discussions if they are still struggling with understanding that lesson.

So, if you see some of your students watching you, having nothing to say, this might be because they have not understood quite well your content and so they dare not speak about it. Therefore, you need to re-explain, ask other students to do that, and provide much more practice.

Having nothing to say also occurs when students have not done the assigned tasks for a number of reasons (such as being absent, not being serious, not understanding your instructions, etc). In such a case, seek the reason and try to push students to work hard.

These are some of the important reasons for students’ resistance to participation in class.

Students’ participation is a necessary component of learning. It is a goal, we teachers need to plan for and achieve. When students say no to participation in class we should seek for the why and understand what lies behind it. Then we have to make decisions and act to foster it.