How to fail: the importance of building resilience and rigour into the curriculum

 

Rebecca Coulter - School Principal

Young people never cease to amaze me. Their curiosity, innocence, humour and love of learning are exactly what drew me into the profession twenty three years ago and the reason I am still in it today. As educators, we have the great privilege and responsibility to positively impact the lives of our students, shaping their minds and equipping them with the education required to succeed in life. Dubai British School Jumeirah Park, like many other UK curriculum schools, has just celebrated an incredible GCSE and A Level exam season, with students achieving high grades and winning places at universities across the world. With a string of top grades behind them, society leads us to believe that these students will succeed in life: that high grades in exams are equal to a high intelligence level, which in turn, leads to a high probability of winning places in competitive careers and therefore achieving “success.” A straightforward, linear and direct path. Except as adults, we know from life experience that the path to success is anything but linear and direct. It is full of hurdles, obstacles, challenges and U-turns. Successful navigation of this path requires an awful lot more than academic ability. It requires resilience, motivation, strength of character and honest self-evaluation.

The rapid development of resilience in children over the past 32 months is an ironic by-product of the COVID pandemic. This generation of school children have endured distance learning, quarantine and dropping in and out of physical lessons on a constant basis (remember the dreaded “your child is a close contact” phone calls)? They have faced exam uncertainties, last minute curriculum changes at the hand of exam boards, suspension of activities and all whilst wearing masks. For our littlest learners, education in masks is all they know, which is utterly heart-breaking. However, removing COVID from the equation for now, how do we, as educators, develop resilience in our learners, in order to equip them for a world of work that will be very different to the one we know as adults? The late Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity and innovation in education, phrases it beautifully: “Our task is to educate our students whole being so they can face the future. We may not see the future, but they will, and our job is to help them make something of it.”

It all comes back to a simple question: what is the purpose of education? To many people, this might seem like a ridiculous question with an obvious answer. Dig a little deeper however, and you will find a very wide range of opinions. The most common opinion, thankfully, aligns with our vision – to allow children to explore their subjects, talent and interests, developing the skills needed to become successful young adults and to understand their place in the world. Others will suggest it is to furnish students with grades and rankings in order for them to pursue their career choice. Some will even suggest that the ability to memorise and recall information is the fundamental purpose of education, labelling children who are able to do this effectively in exams and assessments as clever or intelligent. I have no doubt they are, but is being able to perform well in a standardised test really an accurate indicator of knowledge, character, intelligence and thinking?

No child is the same. Ask any parent. Whether you have two children in front of you, or twenty-six, each has their own unique method for acquiring, applying, and constructing new knowledge. It is much more challenging procedure for children to accomplish this than some might think (or remember), and the journey is often complicated. Learning, like success, is anything but linear. It has to be more about the process rather than the destination: it is about utilising a multitude of skills to apply knowledge in order to solve an array of problems. Regardless of where a student is at in their learning journey, as educators, it is essential to challenge them, providing a range of “struggle zone” experiences that enable cognitive flexibility and application. In simple terms, experiences which train the brain to adapt to new, changing, or unplanned events. Fundamental to the success of this cognitive flexibility is the relationship fostered between the teacher and student in the process.  As a school, we insist on a culture of excellence, shaped around our vision of “Enjoy, Aspire, Achieve.” There is a very deliberate reason for why the ‘Enjoy” comes first in our vision. To enjoy, and develop a love for learning, it is imperative that children feel safe, supported, confident, encouraged and able to take risks without judgement.

One educational method we use to achieve this cognitive flexibility is the learning “pit.” Designed to normalise challenge in order to build a growth mindset, the aim of the “pit” is to encourage children to become more comfortable with metacognition and develop the skills to question and reflect so that their knowledge can move from the surface level (recalling basic facts) to deep understanding. It is important that children are given opportunities to not only question the theories that are presented to them, but also to question their own thinking as well. That way, not only can they develop critical thinking, but the much-needed skills for learning other concepts.

It sounds straightforward, but it is far from that. This method of learning calls for resilience, in great quantities. If students are going to strive for progress, they must first get comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable. This is not easy for anyone, let alone young minds. It requires children to set aside their fears and be vulnerable; willing to try something new, different or difficult. It requires them to build a mindset rooted in determination, self-efficacy, patience, resilience, creativity, big-picture thinking and accountability – a plethora of skills needed to make it in the world of “grown-ups”. Done well, it is a powerful learning process.

Achieving success is rarely easy. The same goes for learning. When learning is not rigorous and relevant, students will invariably opt for the easy route and “jump over” the pit. Voila - instant success with little effort and zero learning as a consequence. As preferential as this method may seem at times (imagine the arguments that could be prevented when they ask for help with maths homework), building small humans into healthy, thriving big ones is not about clearing adversity out of their way. The questions and tasks set within the curriculum have to challenge students to think and apply what they are learning across multiple disciplines. Resilient students are able to use knowledge and skills to create solutions that they can then develop further. Rigour is not, contrary to outdated opinions, more worksheets, a higher-level reading book, covering more content or completing more homework. Rigorous lessons and learning activities ask students to compose, create, design, invent, predict, research, summarise, defend, compare, and justify in order to demonstrate conceptual mastery and attainment. In other words, rigorous learning requires children to engage in high levels of thinking. And this takes courage.

To quote Henry Ford, the American industrialist and founder of the Ford Motor Company, “failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Our children need to see the value of failing forward, which is the deliberate and purposeful use of failure to find success. When children understand that “failing forward” will not affect them negatively, they are more likely to try new and more challenging things in the classroom. When we only celebrate the wins, we instil a belief that the only thing that matters is success, when actually, the courage shown in doing something brave and difficult is more important than the outcome. Age-appropriate rigour, freedom and challenge lets children learn where their edges are, encourages them to think about their decisions, and teaches them that they can cope when things go wrong. When children take risks, they start to open up to the world and realise their capacity to shape it. Resilience isn’t about never falling down. It’s about learning how to get back up again. “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it’s the courage to continue that counts” (Winston Churchill)