The title is self evident, I wonder if anyone can tell me of ways or times when they or anyone else has learned from failure?
I am serious in this request, we hear a lot about learning from failure or learning from our mistakes but are these anything more than just platitudes or cliches? Is it possible to learn from failure or is failure the opposite of learning?
Please, if you know of any examples of someone learning from failure I’d be very grateful if you could add a comment to this post about what or how they learned from that failure.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Subscription Services for Schools, Why?
- Mr Gove’s Challenge to Us All
- The Power of a Brand name
- 5 Twitter Tools Your Followers Wish You Wouldn’t Use
- If Twitter is so Good Why do so many Teachers Leave it?
Post Revisions:
This post has not been revised since publication.
Tags: Failure
Can be said in a single sentence:
I no longer wear nappies.
but, Dughall, do you really think that is failing?
Babies are not expected to toilet themselves nor to have control over their bodily functions, so a baby soiling itself is not a mistake or a failing.
Sure, it is a success when a baby first uses the potty, then toilet, goes all day without wetting but so is each little stage leading up to that.
To my mind, yours is an example of learning by succeeding.
Interesting request, Doug. I guess it depends on how you define failure. The example that immediately springs to my mind is when I failed my driving test at my first attempt. I was gutted. I was top of my class in formal academic learning, so I assumed that I would sail through this test that the wider population (not just academically able A level students!) took. Rather big headed of me, and I failed. I took it pretty hard and discovered that I needed to know what I was doing wrong in order to correct those errors and improve. Everything I had learned at school had come fairly easily to me, so learning how to improve from feedback was actually very new to me. I changed instructor, listened to what he said, practiced the elements that I had failed on, and learned new ways to tackle them and passed second time round.
Thank you for the comment, Jo.
So, for you it sounds like it was the reflection you undertook following the failure, which led to your learning.
My point being is that having failed the first time, you still did not know how to do it (at least not proved it yet) but you had an indication of what to practise.