10 Learning Barriers to Overcome to Make Learning Easy

Last updated: November 13, 2023

Learning something new can embark us onto a new path. However, that doesn’t always mean the path is always easy. Sometimes, learning something new is challenging and straight-up tough. From dealing with a language barrier, learning how to get used to online learning, and dealing with social learning, there are many learning barriers for students to deal with when learning something for the first time.

In this article, we will share some of the common learning barriers and some tips to help you overcome them with ease. Whether the learning barrier is happening with your children or an adult learning a new skill in a different language, you might find that some or all of these barriers are interfering with your learning, but don’t worry; they’re things you can overcome.

1. Fear of Failure
2. Peer or Parental Pressure
3. Low self-esteem
4. Emotional or mental difficulties
5. Too much jargon to learn
6. Fixed mindset
7. Lack of defined goals
8. Student requires accommodations
9. Hands-on training lacking
10. Physical barriers such as distance (with no online learning)

Why are there barriers to learning?

There can be barriers to learning for various reasons. Sometimes, it’s caused by emotional problems, such as deep-rooted insecurities or a lack of self-confidence. Other times, it’s caused by instructors who are still figuring out the best way to teach. Alternatively, barriers can be caused by physical elements as well. No matter what barriers you face, all of them can be worked on through learning from different channels, hiring a tutor, or changing elements in your learning environment.

10 Learning Barriers for Learners

1. Fear of Failure

A fear of failure can hold us back from learning something cool. Often, when we want to learn something new, we push it off until tomorrow. It’s as if we need to mentally prepare ourselves for working on something we’re excited about or learning something that’ll change our lives. The reality is learning something and mastering it takes years. So, the only failure to fear is not trying at all. The learning process encourages failure, if anything, especially when outside of a classroom. In a real-world setting, failure means trying new paths, experimentation, and risking it all to understand how something truly works. The confidence to fail comes from practice. The more comfortable you become with playing around with a new skill or hobby, the more you’ll fail and realize that some cool and exciting accidents are possible. Some of the greatest epiphanies you’ll have from learning will come to you from being imperfect. If you’re always trying to learn the correct way to do things by following strict guidelines, you’ll never know what’s possible. Push the boundaries of your experience while learning. Act like a scientist trying to discover what paths don’t work by making all the mistakes you can make early on. Trust me, you’ll get better with time by knowing what doesn’t work. And soon, the path of the most effective ways to do something will light up for you to make success possible.

2. Peer or Parental Pressure

One of the learning barriers can come in the form of pressure from your peers or parents. Learners who are forced down an educational path they don’t want for themselves will naturally want to avoid or pull away from learning. Learning is supposed to be fun. Whether it’s language learning or something more academic, it can feel boring or unpleasant to learn something we’re not genuinely interested in. Our parents want what’s best for us. Our bosses want us to over-perform. Pressure to succeed from others will be strong, but that doesn’t mean it’s in your best interest. If the student isn’t passionate about a subject, it will make learning more difficult. Understanding that sometimes in life, you must say no to people who don’t have your best interest at heart is required. Sometimes, teachers, parents, or bosses push you down paths that aren’t right for you. Learning something new doesn’t need to make you feel emotional, like sadness or anger. You should feel motivated and inspired. If you don’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer like your parents, the sooner you tell them no, the faster you’ll get on the path to learning something that is best suited to you, which will put you in a much better mental headspace.

3. Low self-esteem

One of the biggest traumas people face is the feeling of not being good enough. And when learning something new, it’s very easy to feel that way because you’re still a beginner. Learning something new takes time. Everyone in the community who has mastered a skill has done so through years of practice, years of being an employee in the industry, and years of practicing on weekends or evenings, too. If you have low self-esteem and think that you’re not able to figure something out, that’s simply not true. Invest your time in reading blog posts, learn from your pupils, try to find a customer to sell something you’ve made to, try teaching other people lessons you’ve learned along the way, create something with the knowledge you have, and watch videos and online courses teaching you all about your area of interest. You can gain confidence from training in your field through education, watching demos of tools, and being social with people in the industry to learn more than you could at school alone. When there’s a lack of effort, you’ll only take longer to learn something, making your low self-esteem last longer. In the digital world, you can learn anything you want for free or for a price; you need to look for people selling online courses, offering 1:1 coaching, or trying to figure it out on your own.

4. Emotional or mental difficulties

Sometimes, life happens. You could be the brightest student your teacher has ever met, but if something tragic happens in your life at that time, you may find yourself losing the ability to focus on learning. For example, a sudden death of a parent or sibling can make learning difficult. Alternatively, difficulties with mental health, such as anxiety disorders, depression, or something else entirely, can make it challenging to work on building the skills. Taking a leave of absence can temporarily help you regain mental clarity and heal from any difficulties so that when you return to learning, there is no barrier in your way. Cognitive learning can’t take place when your mental health is suffering. So, taking the time away to manage your thoughts will make it easier for you to learn when you’re back at it again. Even a child might need a break from school now and then, so listen when children seem burnt out from learning. No one can perform at a go, go, go pace all the time.

5. Too much jargon to learn

One of the learning barriers could come in the form of language. You can be fluent in a language but still have difficulty grasping a topic if there’s a ton of industry jargon or if the vocabulary is at a reading level much higher than yours. Taking an introduction class or reading a book for beginners might help you get on track to learning better. Sometimes, you can’t just pick a random book off the shelf in an area of interest without some industry knowledge or a basic understanding of the vocabulary. You can improve your vocabulary over time, better understand the terminology used, and overcome issues. Create a course outline or a course description that makes it easier for students to understand what level a course is in when teaching a subject. How you design a curriculum can make it easier for students to absorb what they learn without making it feel overwhelming to learn various new words.

6. Fixed mindset

A growth mindset is one in which a person believes they can improve their ability through hard work and practice. A fixed mindset is one in which someone believes their intelligence, abilities, and personalities are permanent and unchangeable. Having a fixed mindset not only holds learners back from succeeding in life, it’s not true at all. The brain has the capability to change and evolve as it learns new information. Hence, we’ve been able to learn and grow throughout our lives. It only stops when you stop learning. Having a fixed mindset can hinder your ability to learn. Understand this: whatever you want to learn and succeed at, you can achieve it. Physical learning happens in the brain all the time. So, put aside those cultural beliefs that you’re stuck with what you’ve got; you’re not. You can change any personality trait, learn any topic, and improve your intelligence.

7. Lack of defined goals

A student learning new skills needs access to defined goals to overcome learning barriers. When goals aren’t defined, you aimlessly learn something without knowing the direction you’re going in. Learners need to know what they’re working towards. Is the goal to graduate and get a job? Is it to build something they weren’t able to before? Or is the goal to increase the money earned? Teachers need to work with students to help them achieve their goals. The experience of learning isn’t enough in and of itself. It needs to be guided down a clear path that the student wants to take to keep motivation high and help students reach the finish line with ease. The training students receive can be more personalized when teachers and students know what they’re working towards. Ensure goals are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and have a set timeline.

8. Student requires accommodations

A barrier for learners can be a disability that requires accommodation. For example, if you’re hearing impaired, you might need subtitles on a video tutorial that you can follow along to. Those subtitles can be added with modern video editing software in about two to three clicks, so accommodating students’ needs these days is easy to do. Another student might have issues with language barriers and might need specific texts translated. Most books come in various translations, which is another easy thing to access. You can also allow people to select which language to translate videos to as many tools will customize it for your region when adding subtitles. Another basic accommodation you can offer to help people overcome barriers to learning is books in different formats, such as audiobooks, text, ebooks with font size customization, and more.

9. Lack of Hands-on training

Sometimes, to help overcome barriers to learning, all students need is a demo of something being done that they can follow along to. Learning a new skill isn’t just about memorization or injecting your brain with tons of knowledge. It’s mainly about the application of the knowledge in a different setting. It’s about taking what you’ve learned and building something with that knowledge. For some, you might write an essay about it. For others, you might create a business or a tool with the knowledge, and for others, you might make money selling the knowledge as a service. But by taking what you’ve learned and practicing it in the real world, you’ll continue to gain expertise in your craft to become a master eventually. But without practice, you’ll never know the depths that your knowledge can take you.

10. Physical barriers such as distance (with no online learning)

One of the barriers to learning is physical ones. For example, most people need to travel far to get into a good university or college to connect with academic professors, leading industry experts, or world-renowned coaches. If you know that the barrier to learning is the location of your facility, creating a virtual or online version of that on your website can be a great way to allow people to learn from you around the world. As a teacher, you’ll want to ensure that absolutely anyone can learn from you if they want to. Opening up your own website to offer online learning can help eliminate the barrier a physical location causes for people.

The best learning platform to eliminate barriers to learning

If you’re looking to make money teaching or selling teaching resources to help remove barriers for learners, consider Payhip as your platform of choice. Payhip is a digital products website builder that allows you to publish online course material, where you’ll be able to enroll an unlimited number of students and earn an unlimited amount of revenue. You can have a free domain or plug in your own. Your website can have landing pages or blog posts to attract students to your website. And you’ll be able to offer more than just online courses.

You can also offer digital downloads, one-on-one coaching, software to make learning easy, and more. You can assign homework, projects, and more stuff for students to create to ensure that they genuinely understand the things you teach. And you’ll have the freedom to set up your curriculum in any way you’d like. To build your teaching business and help eliminate the barriers to learning for your students, sign up for Payhip today.