Productive Failure | Manu Kapur | TEDxLugano

[Music] failure happens we make mistakes we fail and it really sucks when we do but we all know failure can be a very good teacher when it happens so my question to you is this if failure is such a good teacher why do we wait for it to happen why don't we intentionally designed for it what if designing for failure could be the locus of powerful learning what if we could design failure in ways that are actually productive for learning and now what if I told you that we now understand and know how to do exactly that and we understand the science behind it as well and I'm gonna share a bit of that with you but first I want you to take I want to take you back in time to your teenage years if you remember even talk about teenage years and we can't talk about teenage years if we don't talk about our first love so indulge me please close your eyes all of you close your eyes now imagine and picture your first love go on picture first love got it okay you can now open your eyes now I don't know about your first love but my first love was absolutely stunning oh gee would you like to see thank you for that enthusiasm you asked for it yeah it's weird my first love was football you see as a teenager all I wanted to do was play football like professional football I turned and I trained really hard for it and I think back about the training days the training philosophy one thing stands out we always used to train all the way to the limit and then we've pushed some more see to your strength training endurance training until your arms and your legs and your body buckles you can't go on and then you push some more it's as if you were taking your body to the limit and then you learn to push some more why would you want to do that because good things happen on the other side of failure it was on the other side of failure that both mental and physical strength are optimized it was on the other side of failure that the mind and the body can work together they get coupled to optimize growth in performance and if you think about matches tough matches ones that really good right down to the end to the wire how do you decide who who wins and who loses it's actually how you deal with the other side of failure unfortunately for me my footballing dreams ended with an injury and that was it which brings me to my 20s and my twenties are a classic case in depression and failure so after football I finished up engineering school and I wasn't particularly good at it then I had a startup which failed spectacularly and then I joined a consulting firm which I absolutely hated and then out of the blue a teaching assignment an opportunity to teach presented itself I said okay other than football for some weird reason I could always do math I don't know why okay I'll teach math so I took took up the position I became a teacher to teach high school children or high school kids or high school students mathematics so as a teacher my teaching philosophy was also relatively straight for but I just thought okay if I could engage my students if I could explain to them clearly as clearly as possible if I could show them step-by-step exactly what to do when to do how to do it that they would just get it if only many of them just would not get it they would not see what I was trying to show them so I'll do it all over again explain step by step and still many won't see it I for the life of me just couldn't understand why why won't my students saying what I was so desperately and hopefully clearly trying to show them as you can imagine teaching two didn't work out and I was touching 30s I had tried football I find engineering I thought to start up at consulting and teaching I had literally failed at everything that I tried in the real world and what do you do then I did what any sane rational person would do I became an academic a cognitive scientist a learning scientist and as a learning scientist I wanted to investigate my failure as a teacher why weren't my students seeing what I was trying to show them was so clear so I want to do a thought experiment here imagine you're in a movie now imagine the movies really entertaining very engaging you're at the edge of your seats next imagine the person who's sitting next to you is an acclaimed director someone who's an expert at making movies good movies you watched the movie you come out and I ask you a very simple question did you see the same movie as the director what kind of stupid question is that yes of course I saw the same movie but did you did you see what the director saw if you think about it chances are you'd say no because even though you were watching the same movie the director would see things that you won't even think about let alone actually see them and that's what decades of research in experts versus novices actually says that experts given the same perceptual stimuli see very different things from novices novices tend to be lost in superficial features surface features of the phenomena experts tend to see deep structure critical features because seeing is not simply a perceptual exercise it's a cognitive one and that was my aha moment that's when I realized what I'd done wrong as a teacher I had assumed in my so-called engaging lectures that my students were seeing the same thing I was saying I realized the first job of a teaching of a teacher is actually not to teach the first job of the teacher is to prepare the novice to see and then show them so showing what you have as an expert is really important of course no arguments there but preparing the novice to first see what you want them to see and then showing it it's even more important that begs the question okay so how do we prepare novices to see as it is in sport it is in learning nothing prepares you to see better than failure so let me make it concrete imagine all of you are trying to learn a new math concept and imagine I am your math teacher unfortunately what should I do should I first teach you the concept explain it to you and then get you to solve problems you know instruction first then problem solving or should I give you problems to solve first and then give you instruction or teach you the concepts so the first method is called direct instruction it's very simple you don't know the concepts I'll teach you I'll show you I'll explain to you what what the concept is and I'll give you problems to solve it's a method you and I used to we can we grew up with it and it's still the most dominant method of instruction around the world direct instruction the second method is not so straightforward if you don't know the concepts yet what's the point in me asking you to solve problems that require the very concepts that you don't know yet chances are you will fail you won't be able to solve those problems so why should I make you fail that's evil unless there is an efficacy to that failure and unless and here's the important point I can design intentionally design that failure to be productive for learning from instruction afterwards and that's what productive failure is so which method would you choose direct instruction or productive failure which method would you like to be in to the parents in the room which one would you like your child to be in you see 15 years ago when I was asking beginning to ask these questions the prevailing science theory wisdom were dead against productive failure so how do you choose as a scientist we run experiments we run all sorts of experiments controlled experiments randomized experiments quasi experiments classroom based experiments what did we find when you look at basic knowledge development there is absolutely no difference between productive failure and direct instruction both methods are very good at developing basic knowledge and by basic knowledge I mean this is the kind of knowledge that gets tested on exams and standardized tests important stuff but basic knowledge but when you start to probe whether students understand what they know and whether they can transfer what they know to solve novel problems that's when productive failure starts to outperform significantly direct instruction students and the effects are very strong to put it practically if you were learning via productive failure it would seem as though you were performing one or two academic years ahead of direct instruction think about that that's a huge effect what's even more amazing we found out that the more students fail the more solutions that produce that do not work the more that prepared to learn and the more they learn that's amazing failure directly influences learning and now you may say money why are you the only one who's finding this so we believe you are the others who find similar things and that's a very important questions for science you see the way science works is this if I have a novel finding the scientific community doesn't go say hey great job money well done we believe you yay they say hold on a minute calm down we don't believe you we want to replicate what you do actually they do more than that they actually want to disprove you because do you know what the logic of replication is it is not a pursuit of truth it's actually a pursuit of failure let me make this clear if I have a novel finding if your repeated attempts to fail my work or disprove my work actually fail then there is something to my work and that's exactly what happened productive failure over the last 10 15 years has been replicated extended reproduced across the globe we still have some territory to cover but the real message is that the findings are really robust and I know if you're trying to learn something new and I catch myself as well if you're trying to learn something new it's very easy to take the path of least resistance if you know it just tell me but we are learning that making learning easy does not necessarily ease learning and in productive failure shows that actually making initial learning harder more challenging difficult where learners trouble and even fail actually prepares them to see and learn from instruction later on why why does productor failure work that way well because good things happen on the other side of failure it's on the other side of failure is what creates what I call for a conditions of deep learning activation awareness effect and assembly activation so we all build new knowledge based on prior knowledge but you can't build on prior knowledge if you don't activate it so failure does a really good job of activating your prior knowledge you solve problems you try to do whatever you can it activates your knowledge and then it gives you awareness of what you know but also an awareness of what you do not you find the limit of your knowledge and if you have the right mindset failure creates a positive effect you're then motivated and interested to bridge that gap so you've got your knowledge activated you know what you know you know what no you have the awareness and then the motivation and the effect to bridge that gap I imagine if at this time at this point in time an expert or a teacher comes in and then explains to you works with you builds knowledge and puts it all together assembles the whole thing for you that's where powerful learning takes place that's what deep learning is about and that's what productive failures is about let me bring it home with another thought experiment imagine this time you're not teenagers your kids who love to play with toys okay so you're younger now your kids well some of you have kids and others have found friends and family who have kids and you know some of us quite frankly behave like kids so let's let's just imagine we're all kids who love to play with toys now suppose I would have split you down this middle to two groups group one and then group two to group one I come and say hey kids here's a toy would you like to play with it I'm dead enthusiastic lots all right if you want here you go play with this toy play as you like enjoy and then I observe I observe how you play with that toy and then group - hey kids here's a toy would you like to play with it much better learn you guys but wait you must first watch me play with it I'll show you how to play with it watch and learn so I show you how to play with it okay got it now you can play with it play as you like enjoy now imagine if I asked you two questions if I observe all these kids first question which group do you think would be more inventive more creative and playing with the toy group one group - thank you now you're participating you finally got the memo huh right the next question what do you think happens in school have I made my point you see we've got to start thinking about knowledge concepts ideas these are not physical toys obviously but these are mental toys conceptual toys and part of deep learning inventiveness creativity actually comes from playing with these toys tinkering with them connecting them exploring them failing and flailing if you want to learn deeply you've got to be able to explore you've got to tinker and explore and fail and flail why because good things happen on the other side of failure look this is not an opinion and it's certainly not a motivational speech this is science and the message is very very clear if you don't learn to fail you will fail to learn thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 5,663

Rating: 4.8965516 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Education, Entertainment, Personal education, Personal growth, Science

Id: VOKJmg34wME

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 02 2019