Acceptance of Failure in Higher Education CEP 812 Winslow
Failure. A bold and gloomy word to many of us. How do you personally perceive failure? Do you often reflect on your failures and their outcomes? For many of us, failure is a negative word. Not often do we associate success with failure or reflect on those difficult times. But what if we changed our mindsets and worked to accept failure to begin to understand its importance? While pondering failure, consider the three messages in this TEDx Talk "Failure is Part of Success."
When evaluating failure in an educational environment it's important to first understand students' perception of failure. Students have a stigma associated with failure and testing situations. While performing research, I stumbled upon an interesting study. One hundred and fourteen young students were interviewed and asked to explain their probable cause for failure or success during four different scenarios, which included a testing situation, completing an art project, playing football, and catching frogs. Interestingly, it was found that students, even those as young as six or seven years of age, internalize feelings associated with testing situations which have impact on their self-esteem. Additionally, it's thought that a testing environment leads to feelings of failure or success, "Testing situations are viewed very differently than other achievement situations in school. This unique way of characterizing testing outcomes probably develops within the school environment with teachers and other students being major contributors to it" (Frieze and Snyder, 1980). As an educator, it's important to consider the environment that a testing situation may create for student performance, anxiety, and perception of failure. Educators should attempt to eliminate or minimize these environmental factors. Contributing to a testing situation is the pressure of passing and the association of a score or points. To me, students perceive failure differently when scoring is present.
"Too many students look at their grade only. They see a failing grade (or a lower than expected grade) and that's it; they focus on the score. I wish/hope students would take the time to review on what went wrong and learn where/when they made the mistake. Instead of taking that time, they just move forward toward the next grade." - anonymous colleague
A survey (in the video above), centered around the question of student failure and its recognition, was administered to my colleagues in the Veterinary Nursing Program. I've reviewed their responses and have interpreted the results.
Of those who submitted their survey, 100% of the educators feel failure is an important component to learning (Table 1). Similarly, from Monica Fuglei's quote, these individuals also believe most of our students view failure negatively. These moments of failure result in a loss of confidence, feelings of defeat, and students ultimately closing off, versus recognition and an attempt to perform better. The survey is also used to determine how educators can help students recognize that the Veterinary Nursing Program encourages this failure, and it's not all about the points or score that they were given. To help with this recognition, five of the seven educators (71.4%) believe the most important place to start is by providing framework for student self-reflection (Table 2).
The interpretation of the survey results will help me, and other faculty of the Veterinary Technology Program, work towards this wicked problem. But for now, I believe I have several solutions for encouraging failure. The first, supported by research (Weiner and Peter, 1973), is awareness of a testing environment and eliminating the abundance of point-based assignments or examinations. The second, suggested in the survey, is an increase in self-reflection opportunities in classes. And the third, a suggestion I did not think of before creating the survey, is getting students to question themselves about the idea of failure and how to react to it. Jonathan Fields, an author and entrepreneur, believes that every new journey should invite the idea of failure and begin with questions such as, "what if I fail, how will I recover?," "what if I do nothing?," and "what if I succeed?" (Berger, 2014).
I've created a self-reflection framework example to present to my colleagues during our discussion of student failure. This document will be given to students during their small animal nursing skills course. The document will be given to students multiple times throughout the semester. Students will reflect on how their technical skills (phlebotomy skills, palpation skills, and IV catheter placement) have improved through the semester, hopefully linking them to moments of failure. This repeated exercise will reinforce the importance of failure and will help give students a visual of how much they've grown in just 15 short weeks.
References:
Frieze, I. H., & Snyder, H. N. (1980). Children's Beliefs About the Cause of Success and Failure in School Settings. Journal of Educational Psychology, 72(2), 193-194.
TEDx Talks (Producer). (2012). Failure is Part of Success: Eduardo Zanatta at TEDxBYU [Online video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bujIb_sQZvQ.
Fuglei, M. (2017, March 27). Why Students who Embrace Short-term Failure have a Better Shot at Long-term Success [Online post]. Retrieved from https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/classroom-resources/students-failure/.
Berger, W. (2014) A More Beautiful Question. New York, USA: Bloomsbury USA.
Photos by Alyssa Winslow