Tag: fail

Who wants a child to fail?

FAIL: First attempt in learning.    This for me has always been a great concept, that we often learn the most when things go wrong, however I am increasingly conscious that maybe the world we now live in is becoming increasingly risk averse, meaning that fails are not seen as opportunities to learn, but also that we are actually reducing the number of opportunities for students to learn from difficulties, challenges and even failure.

But why would we want a child to fail?

I suppose this is the key question, who would anyone want a child to fail?    I think this almost goes to highlight one of the key challenges in that a fail is seen as a negative conclusion and something we don’t want children to suffer.   But what if a fail isn’t a conclusion but is a step within a larger journey?    If our fails aren’t terminal or final but are more a road bump along the way, a change to re-channel efforts, to change paths or approaches or to simply learn from error, maybe there isn’t an issue with a child failing.

Desirable difficulty

So, if failing isn’t negative, might it be positive?   The concept of desirable difficulty refers to the positive benefits of being challenged rather than finding things easy.  Surely something not working or going as we intended, a fail, is definitely a challenge and therefore could represent a desirable difficulty if an eventual positive outcome results.   From a fail we have the opportunity to review our practice and identify how we might change to overcome this road bump, and in doing so we learn plus may also grow more resilient.  That clearly sounds like a desirable outcome, albeit I will also acknowledge it may not be easy, but I suppose the term “desirable difficulty” already says this.

Risk aversion

The challenge with all this is that, I feel, as a society we are becoming more risk averse.   We look at GCSE pass rates and want more students to pass each year, with the pass rates being in the high 90%s.    So, this meets our need for all students, or at least most, to achieve, but does it therefore rob students of the opportunities to experience and learn from failure.    As teachers we add scaffolding, we differentiate, we provide additional support where needed, and much more to make students succeed, but again are we depriving students of the benefits which result from where things go wrong?    In relation to AI in education we worry about AI errors, about bias, etc, where I don’t think we can get rid of these things;  Shouldn’t we embrace the technologies, teach students to be critical and accept that sometimes there will be a fail, but that students will then learn from this?

Monitoring and supervision

And looking more broadly we now monitor our children more than ever before, wanting to know their every move and making sure they have a mobile phone on them so they can be easily contactable.  We take them to football games and to other events, often being the ones which arrange the events, where once upon a time kids sorted their own entertainment, returning only once the street lights came on.   I look at my own childhood and the experiences I had when out with friends, sometimes just playing football or having fun, and sometimes maybe up to things my parents may not have approved of.  But in all of this I learned from my experiences, I made mistakes and picked myself up and moved on eventually better for it.

Compliance

And then there’s compliance and the world of health and safety among other areas.    We increasingly mandate things or require checks to be carried out, meaning activities we once did now take more time and effort due to the need to deal with compliance requirements.   As we add all this extra work and effort, the risk assessments, checks and balances, it makes us less likely to try new things and to experiment.   The potential gains of a project, of a new technology for use in the classroom, or many other things may not have changed, but the overhead in terms of checks and balances is now greater than it used to be so this means the perceived differential between the gain and the effort has reduced.   This increases the likelihood we will simply evaluate the technology, project or other activity, coming to the conclusion that the benefit is not sufficient to outweigh the efforts needed, and therefore the status quo remains.   

Conclusion

I came across a quote recently:  “life begins at the edge of your comfort zone”.  The challenge however is that we increasingly don’t want to allow students to experience the edge of their comfort zone for fear of fails or discomfort.   So what kind of life, and what kind of learning will result?  

Exams: Why should 1/3 of students fail?

Not so long ago I read of a discussion in relation to whether the GCSE English Language should be scrapped.   Part of the reasoning behind this is identified as being due to the subject identifying a third of students as having failed.    As a headline I think it is difficult to disagree with.  How can identifying a third of students as having failed be an acceptable thing to do.    On reflection my view is that this issue is less about English Language subject and more about the educational system as it is now and as it has been for over one hundred years.

I remember when I worked within an FE college and I was involved in enrolment following the release of the GCSE results.   A-Level and Level 3 BTec courses had clear admissions requirements in terms of the minimum number of B’s or C’s required to gain entry to each course.   This often included the need for a minimum of a C in Maths or English.    I also remember working with students on their university applications, post A-Levels, where once again universities have entry requirements which students must achieve to gain entry.    Once again there might be a need for three C’s to get on their preferred university course.

The issue with the above is that a certain set of grades will gain entry and other lower grades will not result in entry.    It is easy to therefore perceive some grades as being passes and as a result the other remaining grades must be fails.     The education system as we know it is built on the ability to group students in terms of their ability, as described by their grades, and through this identify the opportunities which will be available.     As a result of this, independent of the U, or ungraded option, there will always be a perception as to some grades, those that easily permit entrance to the next level of education, being perceived as being passes and the remainder as being fails.

An alternative is to have qualifications which allow all students to pass.   From the headline point of view, improving from only two thirds of students passing to one hundred percent of students passing sounds logical and a success worth celebrating.   The issue is that it is unlikely to result in any real change.     FE colleges will still need to set requirements, meaning some passing grades will permit entry while others will not.    Universities will also set their requirements and again some grades will allow students to pass onto the next level whereas others will see their application fail to get them in.

The above alternative continues to be based on an education system where students pass through the system based on their age.    Given this there is a need to differentiate the students hence assigning grades to students based on their exams and coursework.

If we are to consider a system where all students are to achieve, we need to acknowledge the students learn at different rates.   We therefore need to allow students to progress through education at different rates.    The different rates of progress can therefore be used to differentiate students and identify when they are ready to progress to the next educational level.   Again this seems like an enviable solution in that students either complete or can be considered as having not yet completed or achieved.   They haven’t failed as the opportunity to complete always exists, being available for them at a time that suits their learning and rate of progressions.     The issue here is once again perception in that quickly there will become a view as to what the expected rate of progression will be.   This might be that by the age of 18 students will progress to university.   Instantly with this perception the media will be able to quote the percentage of students who proceed on or ahead of this target and therefore the percentage which do not.    Again we have those that progress as normally expected, those which pass, and those who progress at a slower rate, and therefore have not passed;  those which are perceived to have failed.

I don’t like the idea of one third of students failing.  It simply doesn’t feel right.   That said it is difficult to find an alternative solution that wont simply see us back in the same position a couple of years in the future.

 

My teacher fail.

Read loads of Teacher Fails posted on Staffrm over the last few days, many of which I can identify with. The burst pen which you then unwittingly use to colour your face or colour the whole pocket side of your shirt along with the inside of your best suit. The mismatching shoes. I even split my trousers once when interviewing for a middle management position. I got the job as it happens although this may have been the result of the interview panel showing pity on me, but I digress.

The recent discussions make me reflect on a particular teacher fail from my teaching career. The lesson in question was being specially delivered for a lesson observation. Note that this was during the period when lesson observations where generally considered the best method for assessing teaching ability and therefore held some importance.

I had planned to push the boat out a little with a Computing class and get them examining how we might handle arrays of data through actually jumping around in a giant array grid I had taped to the floor before they arrived.

The idea was sound. The learning should have been engaging.

I failed to consider a couple of things. The first thing was that I hadn’t had this particular class for long and therefore they hadn’t fully became used to my active teaching style instead being more used to a passive almost lecture style approach. I also failed to consider that a senior school leader sat at the back of the classroom with a clipboard was a significant variable impacting on the potential success of the lesson.

When it came time for the students to get “engaged” they didn’t. Their nervousness at departing from the norm in terms of both being active and also in terms of such energetic behavior in front of a senior staff member, overcame any enthusiasm and excitement that might have otherwise existed. Despite my best efforts to encourage the students and drum up some excitement the lesson ended up being flat. It failed to live up my expectations.

The lesson learned from this is that it is all well and good having the best intentions regarding an active and participatory lesson however we need to give some consideration to the current norms. If students are used to being sat passive it is unlikely they will be able to directly progress to a lesson filled with student directed activities and groupwork. This particular lesson served me very well when I moved to work in the UAE where initially at least I found students very reluctant to express personal beliefs, views and feelings. There however, having learned my lesson, I went about encouraging and developing this in a more gradual way of a period of time.

On reflection it wasn’t a lesson fail, more a case of Not Yet the lesson I have hoped it would be.

Photo, Fail, by Amboo Who on Flickr