🌿 The Power of a Protected Fail (and how to create the right conditions for it)
One day a couple of weeks ago, one young lady who lives nearby me, with a twinkle in her eyes, told me she'd seen my videos and she would like to learn archery with me.
And driving, too.
And then another joined her.
And then two more.
And it has just become so fun, this little gang of us now, learning these skills, having some fun, and they're even teaching one another.
There is such joy when they manage something new... it is a kind of medicine for us all.
Through these on-the-go teaching experiences, I’ve been thinking more and more about one powerful teaching principle I keep coming back to and notice I like to weave into the initial stages of learning a skill: the protected fail.
I relate this practice to the concept or theory of "Tell me and I forget; teach me and I remember; involve me and I learn."
It isn't just in teaching archery that I've applied this idea of a protected fail. It's also in Mandarin. And in teaching how to drive a manual car.
Here are three different examples of recent protected fails I've woven into these three distinctly different subjects:
1. In driving – I've been asking students to do a deliberate 'stall'
I decided that in our first few driving lessons we would not even move the car.
We would start by learning how to open the car door, how to turn the key. How to make sure ALL the car doors are locked (and the quirks of my old banger).
And then? When they eventually do start the engine, I ask them to deliberately stall, and I guide them right into it.
I want them to know what a heart-pounding moment it is when the car jolts, the engine dies, and panic rises.
I need them to feel it a few times, because with manual driving, when you stall in a public place, it can be the most panic-inducing thing ever. But recovery from it can be swift and simple if you have practiced the steps.
So one of the first things I do is teach them how to recover from a stall. And that’s the part that sticks.
So it’s not just a fail... it’s a safe one.
A release of the clutch all the way up until the car stalls. From this they learn the feeling of the clutch... while also realising the importance of the accelerator (it becomes the next thing they are eager to try).
2. In Mandarin – I've been asking students to write a character in whichever way they please... at first
When I teach Mandarin, I have quite a few unusual techniques.
One of them being that I encourage new learners to write characters the “wrong” way first. Not in correct stroke order.
We follow this by learning it in correct stroke order.
Students can feel the difference when they do it right.
And their appreciation and 'aha' moment for the benefits of adhering to stroke order rules is set more strongly.
It's one thing to tell them this is a rule, it's another to tell them to break it and see what happens!
I find the latter to create a more interesting and memorable learning experience.
This is a small design in my learning process, but I think it works. So students don’t just learn the rules, they understand why they're there.
3. In archery – I've asked new students to first try and just release an arrow with no guidance at all
Or to try and string a bow with no guidance.
They'll push, pull, eventually ask for some help! (Or I'll step in before a bow may snap... ha!).
I feel that when I have enough time to give a student a protected fail, the learning just sticks better.
I saw that when new students taught other new students, it just seemed to be harder to get the point across.
It made me appreciate how teaching truly is an art and a practice, and experience of the teacher really does make a huge difference to the way you will learn something.
The ingredients that make a protected fail work
There are some ingredients to this protected fail that I notice... if I leave out one more than the other, it isn't good for the student:
Praise
One girl, after stalling, said she felt her heart jumped out of her chest!
And this is key. I would rather she has this experience with me around to help chivvy her out of the negative energy, than she sits alone and fears to drive ever again.
I know how scary stalling can feel, so this reminded me to praise a lot through a fail.
I also think it's important to try and end the protected fail with a win, whether or not it takes a couple of tries to get to the corrected version.
Probing
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” And I need to remember to allow time to explore those portals every time I rushed into sharing enthusiastically the 'right' way to do the thing. I realised I was losing something magical that happens when students can linger to reflect in the space between the fail that just happened and the correction.
Probing here and asking questions about what they thought, how it felt, brought out surprising things when I paused long enough to listen.
Patience
My excited golden retriever style teacher tends to come out in these moments and I can rush to help them get the method right...
But patience is the name of the game with the protected fail approach (like in life in general). So I have to really slow it down and even 'enjoy' the moment of failure more, with just the right probing to help recover well from it.
Over to you...
Do you use structured fails in your teaching practice? Those controlled stumbles that lead to deeper understanding and lasting confidence?
While teaching to an exam or curriculum, you may not have much space to craft these kinds of experiences.
What are some ways you could bring them into your subject or teaching practice more?