Encouraging Students to Think Well in a Scroll-Happy World

Soft skills and emotional awareness matter in a complex world

person scrolling on phone whilst using keyboard on a laptop

The classroom is a complex place. Learning to think well is just as important as what students need to learn.

Reasoning, language, emotional balance, and soft skills are at the root of academic and personal success. If the balance is right, all these skills mean that students can adapt more easily to changing circumstances in life.

While the syllabus might list algebra or essay writing as core subjects, there is an invisible curriculum behind all subjects, which is well worth delving into each week.

Students need to make decisions about their learning regularly.

Decisions like when and how to revise for that test, how to organise their notes and study space, how to research a topic that they need to write about, how to work with others on a project.

How students make decisions, manage distractions, communicate, and collaborate is often what shapes the quality of their thinking.

English, reasoning, and basic maths

Language allows us to express our thoughts.

English, or any first language, gives students the vocabulary, syntax, and rhetorical tools needed to frame ideas, discuss arguments, correct any assumptions made, and then to put forward their conclusions. Reading allows students to put themselves in the picture, and writing strengthens thought processes and gives learners the tools to be clear in what they say.

I’ve been a maths teacher for over 30 years, teaching students aged 11 to 18.

I’ve watched as some students have become more confident in expressing their mathematical ideas. I’ve been encouraged by that. But I’ve also been concerned about those students who find it difficult to express their ideas or even to complete work.

I wonder what it is I should be doing to reach those learners. Sadly, I haven’t always been able to reach learners who find thinking and reasoning difficult.

Teaching the academic side of maths and the skills to reason and make decisions well, are things that I continue to do in all my maths lessons. I hope it will help my learners to master the soft skills that are necessary for success.

Thinking carefully and making learning decisions

When I started teaching 30 years ago, there were no tech gadgets to distract students. Now learners have lots of tech around them that can make it easy to lose concentration or even to get started.

I know that to think well, students need space around them and space in their heads to work with ideas and manipulate them before they can decide on the best way forward with their learning.

Sometimes learners make quick decisions. Those decisions may only make it easier for them in the short term, not in the long term.

So I encourage my students to use cognitive wait time, where they look at a decision they have to make from different angles before making their mind up on which way to go. For me, it’s the mental equivalent of deep breathing before speaking.

I recently taught a learner aged 17, Alex, who had an issue deciding on whether or not to go to university. She went backwards and forwards with her decision. In one lesson, she was keen to go to university, then in the next lesson, she was doubtful that she would get the grades to go.

Here’s a summary of how we approached this important decision together.

In my discussion with her, I relied on a technique called Force Field analysis. This is a decision-making and change management tool developed by psychologist Kurt Lewin in the 1940s.

Force field analysis helped Alex visualize, sort out, and work with the two types of forces that influenced her situation. In Force Field Analysis, there are two types of forces. Forces that push towards change (driving forces) and forces that resist change (restraining forces).

At the start of our discussions, it was important for Alex to realise that we often don’t make up our minds well because these forces cancel each other out. Change happens when the forces in favour of a situation, in this case going to university, outweigh the forces that were holding her back from applying to university.

The goal of our discussions was either to strengthen the drivers or weaken the resistors so that a decision could be made based on reasoning and emotions.

Here’s a summary of how Alex summed up her thinking using this process.

Driving forces or reasons to go to university

Alex wrote down the forces that were moving her towards applying to university and gave each one a score out of 5.

Here is her list of those driving forces.

Better career opportunities after graduating, scored 1. Personal growth as a person scored 3. Getting to network with interesting people scored 4. An interest and passion for the subject scored 5. Support from family and friends and access to great resources scored 3.

So her total score for her driving forces was 1 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 3 = 16

Restraining forces or reasons not to go to university

Then Alex wrote down the forces that were keeping her back from applying to go to university and gave each one a score out of 5.

Here is her list of those restraining forces.

The financial cost, including tuition fees, moving costs, living expenses and building up debts scored 4. Uncertainty about whether a degree is needed for the career she had chosen scored 3. Fear or burning out or giving up the course part way through it scored 3. Lack of motivation to commit to studying for three years scored 2. Peer pressure from friends who had already chosen different paths to advance with their studies scored 2.

So her total score for her restraining forces was 4 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 14

Looking at these scores and taking into account how she felt about how honest she had been with these ratings, Alex decided to move forward with her application to university. The scores were close, but taking into account how she felt about studying her subject more and the emotions behind that, Alex felt that she had made the right choice at that time.

The emotional landscape of learning

There‘s also an emotional side to making decisions.

Anger, anxiety, or excitement can change how we process information and make choices. That’s why making learning decisions when hungry, distracted, or stressed is not a good idea.

The brain needs calm to access the prefrontal cortex, where reasoning lives.

In Alex’s case the decision wasn’t easy. She was careful to go through the Force Field analysis process when she’d had a good day and had time and space to sit and think it all through carefully.

In other lessons I used to help my students notice their emotional states and develop strategies to reset them.

We worked on using calming worksheets, taking movement breaks, or journaling. In one school I worked in 15 years ago, I trialled the idea of students writing a short note in their maths book at the end of each lesson about what they felt they’d learned in the lesson about maths.

Emotional regulation tools don’t just soothe, they can help students to think and reason more clearly.

Modern distractions that can make learning difficult

Today’s school-aged students face a lot of cognitive clutter.

TikTok, group chats, gaming, streaming can all compete for attention, often more successfully than textbooks. Multitasking can lead to poor reasoning and the dopamine hits of online scrolling can make it difficult for students to focus well.

Procrastination is another common barrier.

But it’s not just laziness. It’s often fear of failure, perfectionism, or students feeling overloaded, so they don’t start on a task. I’ve found that teaching students to name what they’re avoiding and why, and helping them chunk tasks into manageable steps, is a much better way to go than just telling them off for not getting work done.

Soft skills which are hard to teach and difficult to learn

Thinking well doesn’t happen on its own.

Teamwork, leadership, and clear communication are important in problem-solving, but often they are not taught well in schools. Limited time, school policies and procedures, and a large emphasis on academic achievement, can make it difficult to teach these soft skills.

Group work can mean that not everyone puts in their fair share of work. Student leadership opportunities may be reserved for the confident few. And meaningful dialogue requires trust, which is hard to build when there are constant performance pressures.

That’s why project-based learning, peer mentoring, and reflective circles can be game changers, offering space to nurture relational intelligence.

Support from parents

Parents can play an important part in helping their children to become thoughtful learners.

But pressure, even well-intended, can backfire , leading to anxiety, resistance, or burnout.

I’ve found that what works better is curiosity, encouragement, and shared reflection.

So I used to suggest that parents asked their child “What made you do a task that way?” instead of “Why didn’t you do that task better?” . Comments like these often shifted the tone from judgment to growth.

Parents can support emotional regulation by modelling calm decision-making, offering time for decompression, and validating effort rather than just results.

They can help their child develop soft skills by involving them in family projects, like redecorating a room in their home. That can help students work together with family members and friends. Along the way, they should have room to celebrate the good choices they’ve made.

That can help children become good thinkers.

Seeing students as good thinkers

Learning how to think well is messy and needs to be revisited regularly for improvement to happen slowly over time.

It takes words and numbers, logic and emotion, independence and teamwork. As students juggle distractions and develop self-leadership, the role of educators, parents, and peers is more about guiding students than trying to control the process.

Students need to be able to make mistakes with their thinking and to learn how to get back on track by themselves.

With the right tools and the time to breathe, today’s learners can become tomorrow’s wise decision-makers.