The Solution

We here at Fail Small, Succeed Big believe failure is as powerful a learning mode as success. But failure isn’t easy, yet fail we must. Educators can embrace failure as an essential learning mode by creating opportunities for students to demonstrate and develop a growth mindset.

To better understand how to implement a growth mindset into our classrooms, we turn to the TPACK theoretical framework. We propose educators use TPACK — an acronym for Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge — as follows:

Technological Knowledge

Make informed choices about technology that forefronts the role failure plays in success.

Utilize gaming-inspired programs that embrace making mistakes as a means to learn and proceed.

Pedagogical Knowledge

Structure your lessons with a focus on effort-based praise instead of trait-based praise.

Say “Your hard work really shows in your detailed lab report” instead of “Great work on your lab! You’re clearly very smart!”

Content Knowledge

Educators can celebrate the mistakes and small failures students make when working with the course content.

A math teacher might discuss the creative thinking in a best wrong answer.

Remember that no education setting happens in a vacuum. Context connects all elements within TPACK, and context also suggests shortcomings to a growth mindset. If, for example, a student has not eaten breakfast, praising a student’s effort is not going to address the larger, systemic challenges facing the student. Knowing this context requires a more compassionate TPACK framework, one that responds to these systemic challenges along with the day’s lesson.

TPACK provides a framework for integrating failure into our classrooms and creating opportunities for students to develop a growth mindsets. To learn more about technologies that can be used in educational settings to help foster growth mindsets and allow for small failures, CLICK HERE.