What really distinguishes productive failure from unproductive failure? After a failed activity, there should be that deliberate practice of "failing well": getting to understand why you scored what you scored and expecting informed feedback from yourself, your teacher, and every stakeholder involved in that process. In this situation, teachers and organizations must create the environment for learners to naturally fail well. And this is where King's idea naturally fits in, where the process is not forced but established conditions make failure productive rather than unproductive or punitive.
This understanding leads us to employ what we have coined as the Fail Well Framework (FWF). This framework establishes various stages rather than mere tips in the learning-from-failure process:
Failure – Pause – Emotional Processing – Reflection – Identify Causes – Extract Learning – Modify Strategy – Experiment Again – Evaluate.
Failure is the obvious outcome of your performance that falls below your expectations and those of your organization. This is a matter of interpretation based on your beliefs against the targets laid down prior to the activity or test. Ask yourself, Is that the score I desired? Does this match my effort?
And when the conclusion is that there is failure, and you accept this outcome as a failure, then you have to move to the next stage: Pause. This is that short moment of a few seconds where your inner self wants to react, so you hold firm and approach the engulfing and gnashing emotions. At this moment, you need to process your emotions effectively and let go of the psychological barriers (ego, fear, shame, defensive thinking). Speak to yourself, calm yourself down, stay positive, and say, "I gotta fail well," so that nothing stops you from reaching the next stage of this framework: Reflection.
This reflection must be purposeful and intentional and should help identify the causes of this failure. At this stage, you must not be alone! Your teacher, mates, and the environment should be ready to provide you with the support needed to identify the causes of your failure.
Ask your teacher:
"Sir, what could I have done better for this question?"
"What made me lose marks for this task?"
Ask your mate:
"What did you do differently on this task to get full marks?"
Ask yourself:
"What does the guide say when answering this type of question?"
When you involve all these structures, you are able to extract the appropriate learning that will guide you to modify your strategy for future learning. When you do this effectively, you should feel more confident to experiment with your learning again, and this process should end with an assessment of your response to your failure.
This framework fits quite well with what David Kolb propounds as the Experiential Learning Cycle (Experience – Reflection – Conceptualization – Experimentation).
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