In many classrooms, things look good on the surface.
Students are engaged. Tasks are completed. Workbooks are full.
They’re meeting the standard—sometimes exceeding it. By all appearances, learning is happening.
But there’s a question that nags at many school leaders—one that data alone can’t answer:
Are these students actually growing… or just performing well?
Because those aren’t the same thing.
And if we don’t know the difference, we may be confusing short-term success with long-term capability.
The Performance Trap
Let’s be honest—school rewards performance.
We celebrate finished work, neat books, high marks. We tell students what success looks like, show them how to achieve it, and then measure how closely they followed the process. In a system like that, it’s possible to “succeed” without ever becoming more skilful.
These students become what I call Performance Learners.
They thrive when the steps are clear and the criteria are known. They enjoy being right. They avoid mistakes. And they learn quickly that the best way to succeed is to stay where they’re strong—repeating what works, rather than stretching into what might.
They do well in the Performance Zone—but they rarely enter the Learning Zone.
What Does Growth Really Look Like?
When we talk about “growth” in schools, we often mean achievement growth—progress through the curriculum. One year’s growth in one year’s time.
But growth as a learner is something else entirely.
Learner growth means becoming more capable of navigating complexity. It means stepping into challenges that once felt intimidating. It means needing less support over time, not just producing more output.
True growth is when students start:
- Seeking feedback before they’re told to
- Choosing tasks that stretch them, not just showcase them
- Recovering from errors, rather than avoiding them
- Using strategies more flexibly and reflectively
- Shaping their learning experience, not just reacting to it
This is what Robert Bjork refers to as the development of desirable difficulties—the kind of challenge that doesn’t feel good in the moment, but produces stronger long-term learning (Bjork, 2011).
Without these moments of struggle, learners might become more efficient—but not more capable.
When “Success” Gets in the Way of Growth
Some of the students who achieve the highest results are also the most resistant to challenge.
They’ve learned that success comes from doing what you’re already good at. So they avoid ambiguity. Stick to familiar strategies. Choose safe tasks. And when the structure is removed, they hesitate—unsure of how to proceed without a scaffold.
This isn’t a mindset issue alone. It’s a learning behaviour problem.
As Hattie points out, students who focus on performance over process are less likely to build the learning strategies that lead to long-term success (Hattie, 2012). And as Manu Kapur’s work on productive failure shows, students need time in the Learning Zone—grappling with ideas before receiving instruction—to truly develop conceptual understanding (Kapur, 2008).
If our classrooms only reward correct answers and efficient completion, we may be inadvertently training students to avoid the very conditions that produce growth.
Learnership Shifts the Focus
Learnership is how we break this pattern.
It shifts the focus from what students are producing to how they are learning. It helps students build the capacity to stretch, reflect, and improve—not just do more, but become more.
Through Learnership, we help students:
- Recognise the difference between the Comfort, Performance, and Learning Zones
- Develop their Habits of Mind as strategies, not slogans
- See mistakes as sources of information, not indicators of ability
- Tailor feedback to their learning needs
- Invest effort where it creates growth—not just where it guarantees success
In short, we move them from performance to progress.
Want to Explore This Further?
This blog is part of a larger series exploring the limits of Explicit Instruction—and the missing piece that completes it.
Explicit Instruction Delivers Learning. Learnership Develops Learners.
