Teach Students to Learn From Failures

Provide students with the opportunity to learn from mistakes in the classroom. Tailor teaching and assessment strategies to allow failure and encourage growth.

Should teachers allow students to experience failure?

There are many implications for both the teacher and the student when answering this question. While it is a teacher’s natural instinct to help students, it can be beneficial to allow students to fail. Failure can be a valuable life lesson.

Through failing, students can ponder, analyze and identify their mistakes while examining where they went wrong. This self-evaluation can strengthen resolve to succeed the next time.

Failure enables students to learn from mistakes, stretch their creativity and find ways to overcome obstacles. Failure provides students, and teachers for that matter, with opportunity and motivation for growth while improving skills and behavior.

Allowing failure does not mean poor instruction or stinginess with encouragement. Instead, teachers ought to tactfully provide students with opportunities to learn from their mistakes, facilitate accountability and reflect on experiences. Making mistakes is a natural process and it is important to “get up from a fall.”

Following are ways teachers can help students learn from their mistakes:

• Permit Mistakes: Create a positive learning environment in which students are comfortable making mistakes and where the word failure does not always stand for its literal meaning. Provide students with opportunities to make different types of mistakes.
• Aid in Learning: In addition to pointing out a mistake, help students recognize the “why and how”of their errors as well as “what to learn from them.”
• Build Intrinsic Motivation: Encourage students to meet their failures head on and brainstorm solutions. With every mistake they overcome, students build internal motivation and confidence to undertake more complex tasks.
• Give Feedback: Help students identify and address any obstructions that may be hindering them from learning through feedback. Provide feedback in a timely manner so that growth can occur immediately.
• Encourage Trying: Permitting students to work on their mistakes, can instill a positive motivation to learn. Encourage students to make identifying and correcting mistakes habitual.

Learning from failure can help students increases their determination to succeed.

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