In the Freakonomics podcast episode How to Fix a Broken High-Schooler, in Four Easy Steps Stephen J Dubner interviews Philip Oreopolos, an economist at the University of Toronto, who had studied high school students in Regent Park, a low-income area of Toronto. Dubner asks, “What kind of mistakes do students make in thinking about education?” Oreopoulos replies:
I guess I boil it down to four points. One is students are often too focused on the present. They deemphasize the future or they don’t think about it as much as they should. The second is that students tend to over rely on routine, just keep doing what they’ve been doing and not realizing maybe other routines might be better for them. Three is that students sometimes think too much about negative identities. They focus on what they’re not good at and they might hang out with the wrong crowd and be influenced negatively that way. And the fourth one is that mistakes are more likely when in stressful situations or in situation where there’s not enough information.
That short list is densely-packed with complex subtext, and it hints at a variety of interventions available to teachers engaging with students who are struggling academically.