Why Failure Is Good for Learning, and How It Applies to Your Struggling Students

Most of us, if given a choice, want to do things right on the first try; no one wants to fail. But did you know that our mistakes actually breed more success in the long run? As it turns out, mistakes are integral to the learning process. Failure not only improves information recall but critical thinking, too. Students, however, don’t always understand the full learning potential of their mistakes.[5] When confronted with failure, it’s easy for them to feel ashamed or believe success is too far out of reach. But if we can help students redefine what a mistake is, we can teach them a valuable lesson about improvement and learning. In this article, we’ll discuss the research behind how failure helps students more in the long-term than success. Then, we’ll go over a few tips and active learning strategies that can help you support struggling learners. We Learn More from Failure, Not Success: Here’s Why What’s the key to learning from mistakes? Reflection . Making (and correcti...