Education
Danielle Bentley, MSc, RKin, PhD
Assistant Professor
Surgery, Division of Anatomy
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The culture of academia and higher education is often unwelcoming to failure. With institutional expectations to meet, annual reviews to prepare for, grants to win, and publishing quotas to meet, the pressure to succeed can be overbearing. It appears as though the culture of academia may benefit from embracing the concept of “failing forward”.
To “fail forward” is to find success, often unexpected success, from what remains of a failed endeavour. In education research, a failed project may be when the expected or intended learning outcomes are not achieved despite implementation of a robust research design. As researchers, sifting through the theoretical rubble of our failed projects allows us to discover unexpected gems that we may otherwise have never found: a student perspective we never would have considered, a learning outcome we never would have anticipated, or a future research direction we never would have taken. With this symposium we give the stage to such unexpected gems and embrace the power of “failing forward”.
Speakers from across the institutional spectrum (program-level, classroom-level, and student-level) have been invited to share their own tales of failure within education research. Most importantly, invited speakers will highlight the unexpected learning that arose from their failures and how this learning has positively impacted students.
Speaker: Coral Murrant – University of Guelph
Co-Presenter: Stephen Magliocchetti, MSc – The University of Western Ontario
Co-Presenter: Andre Williams, MSc – Queen's University
Speaker: William (Bill) Ju – University of Toronto
