Author: Dr Peter Lamb, Lecturer in Management
This article explores the implications of learning from failure and student resilience within the context of a postgraduate practice-based group dissertation project on the International Business MSc. The failure of the project raises questions about how learning from failure be embedded in pedagogic design and how it can used to promote student resilience.
A group of nine students, under my supervision, were assigned a client brief requiring them to explore strategic finance options for a SME. The project proved to be a frustrating experience due to a perceived lack of client commitment, which is common on student-client projects (Fitch, 2011). The relationship between students and client broke down, with the client withdrawing from the project. This situation was stress inducing for the students, myself, and the module leader. The module leader and I, in conjunction with the head of department, developed three assessment contingencies. Each one required the students to reflect on their experiences. The purpose of the contingencies was to turn the collapse of the project into a generative failure; a formative process in which students would view the setback of the client withdrawal as a crucial element of their learning (Feigenbaum, 2021). The contingencies and briefing notes were issued to the students and a two-hour meeting was held to discuss and to clarify expectations and to address student questions. The students expressed strong emotional responses to the client withdrawal, and they were unhappy with the situation. After the meeting, the students focussed on their tasks at hand. The eventual dissertations showed that most students had reacted positively to the situation by generating insightful reflections on the experience.
Employing the ideas of reflective pedagogy (Schon, 1987) specifically refection in-action (during the events) and reflection on-action (after the events), I reflected on my experience as the group supervisor and the meeting and the notes I made. It occurred to me that, although not by design, the experience was indicative of a situation where students had to embrace failure and to learn from it. Although failure can be understood as a formative element of teaching and learning it is often difficult for students to accept the productive aspects of learning from failure (Feigenbaum, 2021). It also occurred to me that the learning experience was more aligned with the uncertainties and complexities of the world the students face, and therefore, was a more meaningful learning experience. I found this implication to be quite troubling. What did the failure and the learning from it imply about the intended pedagogic design and learning outcomes, and can we recreate failure beyond this experience? Learning from failure can be a productive and meaningful experience (French, 2018), but it is also an emotional one for students (Hargreaves, 2004). Irrespective of the emotional nature of the experience, the experience was vastly different from the spoon-feeding and regurgitation critique of business education (Dehler and Walsh, 2014). Exposure to failure in this case stimulated many of the students to a demonstrate a capacity for deep learning.
The turbulent nature of the client withdrawal meant that the students had to be resilient in order to move forward. Resilience is understood as the ability to bounce back from adversity and to cope with stress (Southwick and Charney 2018). Student resilience is an interesting issue because a degree of adversity is required in order to promote resilience (Nicklin et al., 2019), but this is less likely in spoon feeding approaches. Adversity was generated by the client withdrawal in this case. However, this begs further questions. Can such pedagogy be implemented in an institutional environment that is not well oriented to pedagogic risk? (Kinchin et al., 2016), and how can we create safe learning environments for students to learn from failure and to develop resilience?
In conclusion, this learning experience was an unexpected one for both students and staff and has opened up questions about the possibilities for embedding learning from failure in pedagogic design and also a degree of adversity as a trigger for the development of student resilience.
References
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Southwick, S.M. and Charney, D.S., (2018) Resilience: The science of mastering life’s greatest challenges. Cambridge University Press.