Failure through learning reminds me of my hobby of growing vegetables outdoors hydroponically. When I started I knew nothing about hydroponics and very little about growing plants. At the start I did some initial research and became inspired by another person's garden design. I partnered with a friend and together we built our first unit. At first it was a rocky start and by the end of the year we had more salad greens then we knew what to do with. What was most interesting from a learning perspective is that we made sooo many mistakes the first year and through each mistake we learned something. For me it was a continual trip through design, iterate, fail, learn, design, iterate, success... and on and on... In this context failure was acceptable as other than a bruised ego and a small amount of money there were no negative consequences and in fact in the long term there were positive consequences... now three years later we are much more skilled at growing vegetables hydroponically.
When I think about learning from failure in the classroom I think one of the methods to do this is to incorporate more assessment for learning as opposed to assessment of learning. The former is an opportunity for learners to learn from their failures consequence free where the later failure has negative consequences (poor marks).
Here is a TED talk by Allan Savory that talks about learning through failure. What makes this talk worth listening to for me is that while the failure Allan experienced had very significant negative consequences for the environment it also was the catalyst for him, and society, to come to a deeper understanding and solution for the original problem he was trying to solve.
When I think about learning from failure in the classroom I think one of the methods to do this is to incorporate more assessment for learning as opposed to assessment of learning. The former is an opportunity for learners to learn from their failures consequence free where the later failure has negative consequences (poor marks).
Here is a TED talk by Allan Savory that talks about learning through failure. What makes this talk worth listening to for me is that while the failure Allan experienced had very significant negative consequences for the environment it also was the catalyst for him, and society, to come to a deeper understanding and solution for the original problem he was trying to solve.