Learning from productive failure

Abstract

I advance a theoretically and empirically-grounded case for designing for and learning from failure, and instantiate it in a learning design called Productive Failure (PF). I describe the key mechanisms and the design principles of PF. The PF learning design comprises a generation and exploration phase followed by a consolidation and knowledge assembly phase. Findings show that the PF learning design is more effective in developing conceptual understanding and transfer than a direct instruction design. Follow-up studies are described wherein key aspects of the productive failure design were tested over multiple classroom-based studies as well as controlled experiments, and how these studies helped us interrogate and understand the criticality of key mechanisms embodied in the PF design. Implications for the learning theory and the design of instruction are discussed by situating findings in the long-standing instructivist-constructivist debate.

Keywords:

• productive failure
• mathematics
• problem solving
• learning
• instruction

Acknowledgements

Work reported has been funded by grants [OER 50/08 MK; OER 03/11 MK] to the author by the Ministry of Education of Singapore through the Office of Education Research at the National Institute of Education, Singapore.