The primary objective of education is empowerment and not following up, innovation and not replication.
Being teachers, we have done brainstorming over hundreds of learning methodologies, for example, Collaborative Learning, Reverse Learning, Experiential Learning, Learning through Activities, Brainstorming, Questioning, Talking in depth, Integrated Learning, incorporating Multiple Intelligences, Traditional Learning etc. And yes, they had been very effective as the planning was always done with the objective of students grasping through these. Still, gaps (learning/understanding) have been spotted. Moreover, the maximum outcome in students was never witnessed. The teacher could transmit only the knowledge that he/she has or could gather from different resources.
In a class of 30/40, every planning is generally centred around the average so that the balance can be made. Teachers always felt it unfair to push a below-average average or restrain an extraordinary to come to a common conceptual point. On the other hand, Productive Failure talks about students starting with their own failure towards their specific capabilities. This made me genuinely attracted towards the basic idea of students’ natural learning.
The very thought took me to the age of Aryans’ way of learning. How could they reach the utmost knowledge and skill? What made them attain high thinking? It was obvious to compare. What are we missing in our teaching-learning process? The biggest difference that could be noticed was the spoon-feeding. Students are following our limited footsteps, whereas they may have better ideas and much more potential than us. The notion of their freedom of utilizing all their high calibre, in itself, is a point of relief for any teaching professional – A BREAK EVEN POINT.
Teachers are too simple to be pinned, however. However, they are too difficult to be convinced. I was convinced and assured to have the ample enthusiasm with which I could move forward towards the experiments of productive failure.
It had already taken much time to be convinced, yet it's never too late. Still, I had some doubts and hesitations, primarily whether students would get interested or not. So to be on the safer side, I planned for a QCT session (Quality Circle Time) for my experiment in spite of my major subject English.
Prior to the session, I took my students to the garden area, wherein they planted trees in a group of five. While returning, they were taken to the infirmary with a purpose of productive failure (as it had nothing to do with their upcoming task) and showed them the chart of different diseases. We came back to the QCT room and sat in a circle. Starting with Meeting up and Opening up activities, a plant was kept in the centre. Students were given a situation:
If you have to invent a plant with unique quality, what will be the uniqueness of that plant?
The prompt was pre-headedly given to them, but was unannounced (different diseases). The responses were not surprising; their trees had the quality of healing different diseases. Only two of them had introduced something new – one was Cell control and another for Virus resistance. The best 2 ideas were announced. They were told to rethink and come with new ideas.
| No of Students |
Old ideas |
New ideas |
| 20 |
18 |
02 |
In the next session, the same instructions were given. But this time, the result was amazing. Nearly half of the students had connected the quality of the tree to challenging issues like Absorption of harmful gases, High production of oxygen, Fruits containing balanced nutrients, Water production, Fruits as full day meal, etc.
This time, their trees’ qualities were related to the solutions of environmental issues – Water scarcity, poverty control, controlling weather conditions and of such levels. 11 out of 20 was a bigger number than 2 out of 20. An improvement of 45%.
| No of Students |
Old ideas |
New ideas |
| 20 |
09 |
11 |
Students were more engaged after the failure in the first session. Their brains had become active, especially when their initial ideas did not work. They were driven by either intrinsic motivation (to find better ideas) or Performance approach Goals (to find the best idea).
Since it was also my productive failure, I felt a genuine thirst for better planning. I could have given a better situation.
This failure has paved the way for further research and a few more experiments.
Rajni Dhondiyal
Sunbeam Suncity
