The rub is in HOW we deal with success. If we focus on failure we will see more failure. If we celebrate success and focus our efforts on creating more of it, we’ll get more of it.

Success as part of a process rather than the end result.

Makes me wonder why we are spending so much effort on testing and less on project-based, open-ended, experimental experiences.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Consider walking. At the start we get it wrong, often. We don’t necessarily hit on a good method all that quickly, but once we do we practise the good method a lot and the bad methods less and less, until we feel pretty much 100% successful. Then we meet alcohol, extreme fatigue, fashionable (but impractical shoes) and so on, and start failing once again. But without those successes to start us learning the right way, we’d still be crawling (and thus have really fashionable kneepads instead!).

I rather suspect it’s the same with everything, at least if we get decent feedback about failures. We learn from the failures and the successes – the carrot and the stick. But, for a period after we start getting it right we still learn and reinforce from the successes, then skill becomes well embedded and we stop learning appreciably until it fails again for some reason.

What we remember, however, are the failures. Do you remember each time you crossed the road in the decade in which you were a teenager? Probably not. I remember one notable time though, in which I nearly got run over by a lorry. The failure to spot the lorry and the near-accident make it memorable so we, at a distance only remember the lessons from the failures.

If we didn’t learn from successes, we’d fail dismally to become good at anything after all because we’d still be failing left, right and centre because we’d not reward the successes and we’d have to try every possible failure method to find the right one, so the proposition doesn’t really stand up to close scrutiny.

For the record, I still prefer to focus on creating more instances of success.

In this question I also suspect the answer is that it all depends, which makes me cautious about the value of an answer.

If students are permitted chances to fail and directions towards not failing in future, then yes they can learn. In small ways they are certainly allowed to fail – grammar, spelling, maths problems etc. and you would hope that most if not all teachers would offer some constructive feedback as well.

On a bigger scale, students do fail. In the UK we don’t have a system of “holding back” as I believe you do in the US, but students that struggle or fail at 16 and 18 (we take national qualifications at both points and can leave school at 18) are allowed routes back into formal education at all levels in later life. Students who get to university are typically allowed resits and repeat years in year 1 and to repeat year 2 of their degrees if necessary (year 3 is our final year and there are fewer chances there without medical reasons).

Does our system allow failure and recovery? Sure. Is that the same as learning from failure? That’s not so clear, but without allowing failure and recovery you never get the chance to learn from the failures, so I guess the answer is yes.

A more interesting question might be should we set our students up to fail more deliberately. It’s certainly possible to imagine situations in which a project is undertaken that has no chance of success – rescue a failing business with no hope for example – because the learning outcomes are not predicated on the success of the project – even if the students fail to understand that. I believe that the army uses this process at least sometimes in its training (Trekkies will tell you that Kirk hacked a test that a guaranteed failure so he could pass it in his training as well), I don’t know that the teaching profession at any level makes regular use of it though?

The problem is, unless we hold students accountable for reviewing our feedback, most will never contemplate our suggestions.

This is where the true learning comes in though. A lot of my students will just turn in something to get it done. If we offer valid, and learnable comments and then hold students accountable for what they do with those comments, then they will learn to analyze their work and revise their original (often unthoughtout) ideas and progress.

Does a student get another chance to learn the topic? Like the resits in Eloise’s entry.

Will the student be motivated to take advantage of another chance? I bet most of the teachers in here have had a student shut completely down at the first sign of failure. Corey is right, there needs to be accountability, or the I’ve-got-it-done/turned-in/good-enough attitude will sink your efforts. Both student attitudes are problematic.

Will the teacher (or school) be able to create the opportunity to re-learn the topic? As a parent, I am sometimes surprised by the lack of a spiral in my child’s reading curriculum. Once a topic is presented, it is assumed it is learned and it is not formally revisited later. Your one chance to learn short vowel sounds is in first grade, for example.

I bet there are some more road blocks to failure being a learning opportunity. I’m thinking that failure is a sign that somethings need to happen next.