The research group I am working with seem to have a natural interest in the process of science education and education in general. A robust discussion took place this morning about why some young people think science is “not for them”. Someone commented that she hears people talk about not being smart enough to be a scientist and is unsure where this thinking comes from.
I see the same thinking come up around mathematics in school and have a possible answer: I think that both science and mathematics are fundamentally ‘fail-based’ disciplines and we are not socialised to think that way. By that, I mean that success is not in finding out exactly what you thought you were going to find out or by intentionally arriving at some answer that you already knew (what a waste of time that would be!); it’s about testing new ideas or knowledge and just seeing what happens. When we test a new idea, we often discover that it doesn’t work in a way we expected or we maybe get stuck along the way and so need to start again and perhaps try something different. While calling them "fail-based" may be an oversimplification of these complex disciplines, I do think that perhaps that idea sits at the heart of them both.
I mentioned earlier that socially we don’t value failure. Failure is perceived as being not good and so when we fail, we consider ourselves to be not good at that particular thing. So, not good at science or maths. Our assessment practices are designed to reinforce this thinking. Recognising this, I had previously thought that building resilience to failure was the way forward for our young people but then resilience perpetuates the thinking or mindset that failing is inherently bad. Resilience, after all, is about persisting when things get really tough or stressful. Perhaps what we need to do is rewire our idea of failure as a way to make steps towards discovering something new and testing thinking. Lets take that stress and anxiety out of the equation. Lets not see failing as a bad thing that we need to stop doing.
I know that I would like to hear much more “That didn’t work but I’ll try something different” in my classroom rather than “That didn’t work so I’m no good at it.”
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