karen.vaughan's blog

Fear of failure, regret, and getting past survival reactions

Learning is impossible if our strategies for living are too focused on fear of failure.

For this post, let’s assume that failure can have a positive, productive relationship with learning. Let’s explore what goes on when that potentially positive relationship is thwarted. If the possibility of failure is too awful to contemplate, using it strategically for learning is unthinkable. The strategy instead becomes one of avoiding failure at all costs.

Failure is an Option. Unless you are a school

What are the ways that failure is talked about in different categories of books listed on Amazon?

When people want to emphasise how important it is to succeed, or to get something right, they say “Failure is not an option”. Avoiding failure seems like a good idea because it’s so often a horrible experience - for us and sometimes also for anyone depending on our success. But in some fields of work, and in certain situations, failure actually is an option.

The F Word: exploring failure and learning

Introducing a new blog about the relationship between failure and learning across different fields of practice, including education.

People in different fields of work – like GPs, carpenters, engineering technicians, and health and community support workers - have different relationships with the idea of failure and the making of mistakes. This has really struck me when doing research on learning in workplaces.

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karen.vaughan's blog

Fear of failure, regret, and getting past survival reactions

Failure is an Option. Unless you are a school

The F Word: exploring failure and learning