Table of Contents
Introduction
Students often struggle to pay attention in loud environments or when tempted to use their cellphones. In reality, this isn’t just a problem students struggle with. Most people struggle to focus on their work when a baby is crying, dogs are barking, or their phone keeps buzzing with new notifications. Teachers try to help their students to focus better by removing distractions and creating quiet environments for their students. However, newly released neuroscience research suggests that this approach may not be the most helpful for students in the long-term and it may be better to allow a bit of chaos, despite the frustration it can cause.
The Science of Focus in the Classroom
A study published this month found that the human brain learns to focus on tasks not simply by expending more energy or will on focusing on that task, but by learning to ignore distractions. The study, published by Davide Gheza & Wouter Kool, tested their participants ability to do a task whilst multiple distractions were ongoing. They found that it was not by enhancing task-relevant information but by suppressing task-irrelevant information that participants were better able to focus. This means that students can’t simply learn to focus better by focusing better, but they need to learn to ignore things that aren’t relevant to what they’re doing.
Many teachers tell their students to just focus on their work, but this study suggests that instead, students need to learn to ignore distractions, rather than simply trying to focus on their own work. This may seem like a small distinction, as both approaches of focus and ignoring distractions are necessary, but the difference is actually quite large with how many teachers and administrators have been dealing with distractions in the classroom.
Currently, teachers and administrators often work to reduce distractions to a minimum and provide students with near perfect environments to facilitate their learning. However, in the real world, such a perfect environment is difficult to manufacture. Even when a person works from home, there are often many distractions such as noise from outside, noise from family members, or, most dangerously, the ever-present distractions represented in our many devices. This means that schools may be temporarily helping their students to focus in school, but actually making them less able to focus in the future when the inevitable distractions of life come.
If teachers and administrators remove all distractions from students any time they need to focus, these students will not develop the skills to ignore these distractions, which will put them at a disadvantage later in life. While it may seem to make sense to craft the perfect, distraction free environment for our students, this research suggests that we may need to allow distractions to exist specifically so that students can learn to ignore them and focus on the task at hand. It isn’t always just the simple subject specific learning task that is important, but the approaches to learning that students gain from class time and teacher instruction. Teachers don’t just teach math, science, or history, but they also teach their students how to solve problems, how to find information, and how to control their behavior and attention.
Should Schools Ban Cell Phones?
One key example that is a timely discussion in many schools is the question of whether cell phones should be allowed in classrooms. Many schools have decided to ban them outright in the name of helping students to focus on school, however, these schools may actually be weakening their students’ ability to focus by not giving them the chance to learn how to manage their behavior themselves.
Removing all distractions from students is basically like making a challenge less challenging. While it may seem like the best answer, as more students may succeed, this only works for the task at hand. Later on, these students, because they were not challenged, will be less capable than their peers who had to learn to struggle and overcome their distractions to be successful. Just lowering the bar so that more students pass won’t actually increase their capabilities.
This suggests that rather than being removed, cell phones should be allowed in classrooms in order to not only be used for beneficial learning applications such as in looking up information or using a calculator, but actively to challenge these students with a potential distraction that they must overcome. While phones definitely represent a serious distraction to classroom learning, college professors and employers won’t require students to hand in their phones before coming to class or work. Students will need to have the discipline themselves to control their urges to check their notifications and messages from friends.
Some education professionals might understand this need for students to learn to control their behaviors, but feel that they can learn self control through other ways that don’t require disruptive cell phones in class. However, the study noted that distractions “from a given dimension only affected processing of that same dimension on subsequent trials, with no evidence for generalization.” (Gheza and Kool) This means that participants had to learn to ignore each new distraction and that they didn’t improve their ability to ignore distractions in general just by ignoring one.
This makes sense with how the brain learns, however. While there may be some small general improvements on some skills, the brain learns based on practical experience. So even if students learn how to ignore the temptations to talk to a friend, the noise from recess outside, or even a TV playing music, that does not mean that they will be able to ignore their phone buzzing in their pocket. This is an entirely different stimulus to the brain that is triggering very different feelings than simple noises or a desire to talk to a friend.
Conclusion
Schools need to remember that they are training grounds for real life, not simply factories to spit out children who have been pumped full of information. Students need to be presented with challenges that they can overcome, they need to be allowed to fail those challenges, and they need to be given the chance to try again. Only through repeated attempts and rigorous training will they gain the mental fortitude that they will need to be fully prepared for the challenges of university and work life.
Teachers can make that training easier by removing cell phones and other distractions, but simply lowering the challenge level won’t help students gain the skills they need. This may still be a tempting strategy as schools themselves may see increased numbers and better student behavior in the moment, but it is important to not get tempted by the short term benefits of shortcuts. Instead, students need to be given an environment that mimics the environment they will experience later in life, and be guided through it carefully and kindly by their teachers and administrators who can help them head in the right direction.
Want more like this? Make Lab to Class a part of your weekly professional development schedule by subscribing to updates below.
References
Gheza, D., Kool, W. Distractor-specific control adaptation in multidimensional environments. Nat Hum Behav (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02088-z
