Failure The key to creativity & success

NATHAN MORTON, DIRECTOR OF TEACHING & LEARNING

The feeling of ‘failure’ is experienced when we set expectations of ourselves and fall short of achieving these. Similarly, ‘mistakes’ are simply a deviation from our extrinsic or intrinsic expectations. The skill of ‘reflection’ is critical in enabling the ability to proactively acknowledge mistakes, failures, or shortcomings as learning opportunities.

Recognising failures and mistakes, and engaging in meaningful reflection, are two practices we do not execute well as a society.

We can see some of the reasons for this in every learning institution around the world. Schools are mandated to present student progress and achievement against an objective five-point scale in a report twice per year.

Fulfilling this legislative obligation is vexing for teachers, who often feel that the process is excessively results-driven and does not leave room to accurately reflect the specifics of an individual student’s situation.

Equally frustrating is the need to be constantly preparing students for examinations at the end of Year 12. Teaching exam techniques in an effort to optimise results, rather than being able to simply focus on learning.

These situations, and others like them, are a necessary part of teaching and are beyond the control

of any school. Yet, the unfortunate reality is that it confines the student experience to unrealistically focus on ‘success’ being nothing short of an ‘A+’ grade.

The problem is that students often grow to fear mistakes or failure. This fear is only exacerbated by practices like VCE rankings, where learners feel the need to look sideways and compare their achievements against others.

In practical terms, a fear of mistakes can mean that students learn to avoid taking healthy risks in their learning. Rather than taking a more left-field, creative approach to arrive at a new solution, students will instead make the safer choice. They fear not meeting the objective, arbitrary criteria of an assessment, so don’t take a chance.

Sir Ken Robinson explained this beautifully when he said, during a 2006 California TED Talk, “Picasso once said this, he said that ‘all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we

grow up’. I believe this passionately, that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.”

To extend this thinking, we also get ‘educated out of’ being reflective, being resilient, having ambition to grow, taking risks, and being willing to make mistakes and learn from them. The way our current system is framed perceives students who are not in the ‘A’ or ‘A+’ echelons as ‘below par’. In fact, the grading system itself represents A+ students as ‘perfect’; they could not have performed better, and they have nothing left to learn in the area being assessed.

The problem with this is two-fold.

Firstly, the artificial ceiling that “A+” creates, disables the potential for student agency and the ability of the high-achieving individual to take the experience to the next level.

Secondly, when the high-achiever falls short of their own expectations, they become debilitated by the outcome and disengage from

their studies because of their selfperceived failure.

Based on my experience in teaching, those who achieve a lower mark are more significantly impacted by the grading system.

A student who achieves a ‘C’ in one task and a ‘C+’ in the next tends not to reflect on the incremental growth and improvement, but instead, fixate on the letter alone. The grade distracts the learner from looking at the feedback they have received or consider their participation in the learning that led into the assessment. They tend not to reflect in a way that enables them to set clear and achievable goals to facilitate improvement for next time. More often, they focus only on the grade they have received, and how it compares to their classmates.

We must allow our students to fail, to make mistakes, and to fall short of expectations at times. We can support them through the mental challenges of experiencing failure, and allow these encounters to help build individual and collective

resilience. The mental models we collectively create around mistakes and failure have the potential to shift our learning culture, by reinvigorating the willingness of our young people to be creative, entrepreneurial, and realistically aspirational.

We do not always succeed, which is perfectly acceptable.

The College, teachers, and parents have an obligation to ensure today’s learners develop the tenacity to dust off adversity, reflect on unexpected experiences, and try new ways of responding next time a similar situation presents itself.

I want to take the opportunity to encourage students and parents to start thinking about learning differently. Look beyond the grade and focus on the learning that took place. Celebrate the successes, but equally, constructively acknowledge the aspects of the learning that did not go so well and view it as an opportunity for growth and improvement.

Protecting our learners from mistakes or failure is not realistic. We all fall

short of our expectations sometime in our life. Schools are the best training ground to do this so that we can support learners through it.

For parents, I encourage you to ask questions like, “What will you do next time?”, or “What have you learnt from this experience?”. This approach constructively supports learners through feelings of disappointment so that they can critically reflect and grow from the experience. This approach will go a long way to helping students maintain positive and productive engagement in their learning, particularly in areas that are challenging.

All students should aspire to be the best they can possibly be. What “best” looks like differs from person to person.

And these principles don’t just apply to our students. Experiencing failure and taking healthy risks are important throughout our lives. As a society, we need to be better at failing, picking ourselves up, and allowing ourselves to grow from the experience.

“Picasso once said... ‘all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up’I believe this passionately, that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.”

- Sir Ken Robinson