Rewarding Students for the Struggle

In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Anne Sobel (Northeastern University/ Qatar) says it’s unfortunate that schools and universities “still work from a grading scale that supports only success.” From a young age, students learn that getting the right answer is what counts. In fact, says Sobel, failure is the crucible of development. She quotes Thomas Edison: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Angela Lee Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania has reached the same conclusion in her research on “grit”: “When experts are doing the kind of practice that makes them better,” she says, “they are frequently failing, frequently confused, not necessarily seeing gain for what will feel like a very long time.” 

“So how can we give our students permission to fail while maintaining a high standard in the classroom, teaching our subject, and encouraging our students to get good grades?” asks Sobel. Here are her suggestions:

• Create an ethos. It should be clear to students, right from the start, that a certain amount of failure is okay, that this is a safe space to experiment and make mistakes. Sobel suggests sharing “famous failure” quotes from Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, the Beatles, Oprah, and Albert Einstein, playing an appropriate TED talk, and sharing anecdotes at strategic points in a course. It’s important, of course, to distinguish between stumbles on the road to success and lackadaisical performance. 

• Find new definitions of success. Sobel creates a “controlled failure scenario” in her course on film production: students are given four hours to create a one-minute video of one page of a script, and she evaluates them on how well they support each other, solve problems, and keep a positive attitude under stress. “The only way to fail at this assignment is by refusing to adapt,” she says. 

• Give real-time feedback. It’s often a waste of time to give students suggestions at the end of a course or project, says Sobel. Timely formative feedback is far more productive: “When students have a chance to refine their work on the basis of feedback, it creates a deeper experience with the material.” 

• Build it into your grading. In her course, Sobel has an assessment category titled Execution versus Level of Difficulty: students understand that final grades depend partly on the challenge of the project. “A grading category that takes difficulty into consideration offers a safety net that gives students the confidence to take calculated risks,” she says. 

• Reflect on failure. At the end of a project or course, it’s very helpful for students to share successes and mistakes, realize that everyone makes mistakes, and think about what to do differently next time. “Learning to fail could help our students become more resilient, self-aware, innovative, and compassionate,” she concludes.

“How Failure in the Classroom Is More Instructive Than Success” by Anne Sobel in The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 9, 2014 (Vol. LX, #34, p. A32), 

http://chronicle.com/article/How-Failure-in-the-Classroom/146377/

From the Marshall Memo #536