The Courage to Learn
By Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and James Marshall
In a review of 170 studies, the authors found a connection between difficult mental activities and negative feelings. They then posed the question: Why do people continue pursuing mental challenges? They proposed that it was because these experiences resulted in success, and that being successful is motivating. Success feels good! Even expecting success can be motivating.
When students are successful and expect success, mistakes are not a great problem. Alternately, when students fail and expect to fail, then they are less likely to try. One study concluded that the most learning occurs when students are successful 85% of the time.
To ensure success, it needs to be clearly defined. The authors recommend dividing tasks within a lesson so that there are four to six measures of success giving students more opportunities for a positive experience. When errors occur, teachers can then make changes to their lessons so that students can be successful when faced with the task again.
Finally, if students feel supported, if the task has value, if success seems possible, and if their peers are participating in challenges, they are more likely to risk trying to accomplish the same tasks. This is especially important for MLs. The authors note that “This requires more careful chunking of content and the systematic use, and fading, of scaffolds.” Then MLs will feel comfortable asking questions and participating in class.
Schulten asked her students about failure in order to demonstrate that failing can lead to success. Her question was, “When have you ever failed at something that was important to you, whether in school, at home, with your friends or anywhere else? How did you react to that failure? Did anything positive come out of it? What?”