GCSE Resits Hub Project

Dr Ellie Willard, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University

It is no wonder resit students can start their college lives being afraid of failure. They are resitting Maths and/or English to achieve a GCSE grade 4 or above, having previously missed that level. This means they may enter the classroom in a potentially anxious and disaffected way.  

Once inside, students are then asked to complete tasks which they fear they will fail at, knowing they struggled with English or Maths at school. In current FE classrooms this year, some students may have thought they met the ‘4 and above’ proficiency level but didn’t achieve it due to grade boundary changes. All students may therefore see their time in that classroom as a waste of time because they don’t expect to succeed. It’s a hard perspective to combat for teachers and students alike. 

And yet, we know as practitioners, that failure in a task can lead to much better learning (Darabi et al., 2018). How can that message get through to students?  

Physiological reaction to failure 

We know failure prompts a physical reaction for students. Cortisol levels rise, and adrenaline also increases when we perceive failure. These reactions are hormonal and beyond a student’s control. Being faced with difficult subject specific tasks and getting them wrong (or worrying you might get them wrong) can prompt an instant physiological reaction before they enter the room and as soon as they start work. This can prompt behavioural reactions akin to the fight or flight response. This is intensified by any errors students make. In an ideal world students would not react at all, and the secret to this is not to see errors as failures in the first place. How can this perspective be cultivated? 

Recent research on failure in classrooms 

A recent piece of research (Aldvirez et al, 2024) examined how teachers’ epistemological beliefs and their confidence in their students to learn from errors can help (or hinder) a failure friendly learning environment. Using questionnaires asking teachers to reflect on their own errors and student errors, combined with observing practitioners at work, the researchers categorised teachers in terms of two factors. Firstly, they looked at the teachers’ epistemological beliefs, and found the 106 teachers fell into two groups: those who see Errors as resources and those who see Errors as deficiencies. Likewise, they found two categories for how teachers see their students’ ability to learn from errors: Students as capable and Students as incapable. 

The observations highlighted some practitioner behaviours which are indicative of the categories. Examples are included in the table below: 

Teachers who see Errors as resources	Normalise errors as tools for learning. Acknowledge student and teacher mistakes.  Use instructional activities that involve analysing and reflecting on errors.  Emphasise sense-making over correctness.
Teachers who see Errors as deficiencies	Emphasise correctness as the most important indicator of learning.  Cover up mistakes made by students. Use instructional activities that involve fixing rather than analysing errors.  Connect errors with low grades.
Teachers who see Students as capable	Involving students in identifying, analysing, and addressing mistakes.  Responding to students’ mistakes by redirecting attention to students’ ability to succeed.  Supporting students to address mistakes on their own. Encouraging students to rely on one another for support.  Asking students who have made errors to use what they have learned to lead.
Teachers who see Students as incapable	Showing students how to correct their errors, step by step.  Positioning students who have made errors as deficient in effort and ability.  Cover up student mistakes, which, although well-meaning, gives their students the implicit message that they are not capable of learning from errors.

Many practitioners will have fine-tuned their technique to maximise students learning from student errors and failure across ages and learning environments. This is vital. However, within the resit classrooms this is even more important. Resit students’ previous ‘I’ve failed because I haven’t achieved a grade 4’ experience means they already have more reason to see their errors as deficiencies and themselves as incapable of learning from failure. FE practitioners inherit them feeling bruised from previous knocks. 

There is further detail in the paper on the techniques used, and you will find the reference below. Reading the paper could reaffirm your practice and even offer further techniques. Aldvirez et al’s research is conducted in schools as opposed to colleges, and you may therefore think ‘that won’t work with my classes’ but some of them require a small adjustment in language used or level of help provided by yourselves, so may still work for you. 

What do you currently do to create a Failure Friendly environment? Please share your techniques in the comments below.

References  

Alvidrez, M., Louie, N., & Tchoshanov, M. (2024). From mistakes, we learn? Mathematics teachers’ epistemological and positional framing of mistakes. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 27(1), 111-136. 

Darabi, A., Arrington, T. L., & Sayilir, E. (2018). Learning from failure: A meta-analysis of the empirical studies. Educational Technology Research and Development, 66, 1101-1118.