Mike Jaffe, Enuma
Fear of failure can be a major roadblock to a child’s learning progress. How does this play out in a classroom? And in a learning app? How do we avoid instilling a fear of failure and instead empower children to keep trying until they succeed?
In 2019, members of Enuma’s curriculum team observed a primary school English class in Seoul, South Korea. The students who waited for class to start were happy and boisterous, talking over each other in both Korean and English, reveling in their growing knowledge of a second language. But when the class began in earnest and these same children were called on to answer simple questions, they sat silent, afraid to speak.
Fear of failure prevents many children from enjoying educational success. Traditional education systems are built on a pass-fail mentality. Children who are asked to answer a question in class may get the answer right or wrong — they may succeed or fail — and when a child is put on the spot in front of their peers, it can be very intimidating. But the process of learning is not binary; it requires trial and error, frequent failure and practice until a foundational skill is built. What can we do to help children feel less afraid to try?
In a 2001 article for The Review of General Psychology titled “Bad is Stronger than Good,” a group of researchers from Case Western Reserve University wrote, “The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones.” As a result, a child who has met with repeated negative feedback during their foundational learning years will be much more likely to avoid situations that they feel might set them up for similar struggles later on. Negative feedback, whether in the form of a short reprimand for answering a question incorrectly in class, or an angry buzzer sound in a learning app when selecting the wrong option, can have an outsized impact on a child’s interest in continuing to try.
There are a number of small, simple steps we can take to help reduce children’s fear of failure in education. One method is to reduce the amount or severity of negative feedback that a child receives. When designing apps like Sekolah Enuma, Enuma built the game system so that selecting the right answer provided immediate, positive feedback, but selecting the wrong answer only produced a tiny movement with no sound and no outsized animation; the goal was to provide ample positive feedback for correct responses and just enough feedback on negative responses to show the user that the app had indeed registered their selection. Structured in this way, the game system removed all negative feedback for children and thus incentivized a ‘try, try again’ mentality until finding the correct answer.
In a classroom setting, or when working with children at home, shifting the language we use can go a long way to helping reduce the fear of failure. Sometimes, simply saying, “Wow, great try!” before correcting an incorrect answer can have a positive impact on a student’s interest in trying again. If the result of trying is purely negative, a student is much less likely to continue trying. But if you celebrate the attempt, you build children’s confidence in the process of trying itself, whether the end result is success or trying again.
To learn more about Enuma’s products and how to design for learning success, visit enuma.com or enumaschool.com.
