One of my desires in creating the CATAL blog was for it to serve as an avenue for discussion within our faculty. The post for today is one of those times when I seek comments about a question that I pose.
The question: Should we be talking about teaching failures? Maybe failure is too pejorative. Should we report on something that did not work so well in teaching?
No one is perfect and sooner or later something will go wrong in the classroom or on the practice site. There seem to be some, however, who will continue to do things the way that they have always been done because of the belief that they are working well (see How many academics does it take to change a light bulb?).
Why do some not try something different as part of their pedagogical practice? There certainly is risk with innovation. Maybe we always do what we have always done because academia is too much about competition and we don’t want to be seen differently from the person who never fails. Admitting that something did not work is hard. I suspect that part of it also is the general fear of failure we all have.
Failure is a common human experience. We shouldn’t consider it to be unusual or untoward. In fact, maybe we should plan for failure.
I think those who are the best teachers are the ones who are willing to take risks and open themselves up to sometimes fail. I agree with Dean Matthews who has said that we should not wait to do something different or innovative until we think that everything is in place. If we use this as a mechanism to guard against failure, then we may never do anything.
I believe that an advantage of discussing our failures in public is that we can get help and suggestions from others. Through these interactions, we should actually learn some things about ourselves and about our teaching. Additionally, struggling with talking about a teaching failure may help us to better understand the challenge for a student when we ask them to write or reflect on an experience, especially one that did not go so well for them.
Finally, opening ourselves up through public discussion of a failure may help us with our PR. How many times have you heard about the academic in the ivory tower who doesn’t seem human. Anything that helps us to look a little more human has got to be good. And isn’t the human experience what lies at the heart of the university?
I welcome your thoughts. Should we openly admit failure in teaching?
4 comments:
Yes! Mark Twain said, "We must be careful to get out of an experience all the wisdom that is in it-- not like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again-- and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." It's not the experience that's valuable, but the insight that comes from it.
Failure is often a better teacher than success. When we succeed, rarely to we ask how and why. When we fail, we often look for reasons. Gina
What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens."Benjamin Disraeli
Since the comments to the post have included quotes, I’ll add another. This one is from the farmer, philosopher, poet, essayist, and novelist Wendell Berry. {If you have never read any of his work, I highly recommend him} In his poem entitled “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” in Farming: A Hand Book, he writes this: “Be like the fox, who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.” This image of the fox reminds us that we will often move in the wrong direction. The teaching life involves making mistakes and learning from them. I believe that we can learn by talking with others about what has happened.
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