Theme: Learning from Challenge and Failure
This year’s Conference theme is an opportunity to open up discussions with our colleagues, our students, and ourselves around the beliefs we hold about challenges, setbacks, and failure in the context of teaching and learning at the University.
How do these beliefs shape the ways in which we approach our work? How do we work to cultivate a culture that encourages risk-taking, growth through experimentation, and learning from our earnest attempts that lead to failure? What measures can we put in place to ensure that the members of our community have the opportunity to flounder, perhaps fail, and flourish?
Questions to Consider
- What do mistakes and setbacks teach us?
- How do mindsets influence our interpretation of success and failure?
- What strategies do you use to teach or communicate that it’s acceptable to make mistakes?
- How are innovation and failure related?
- How can we cultivate the courage to take risks and embrace challenge in teaching and learning? Why should we do so?
- How can leaders, including teachers, chairs, deans, etc. respond to failure in a way that nurtures the will to try again?
- How can we address the “impostor syndrome/phenomenon”?
- What personal qualities help facilitate growth from challenge, setbacks, and/or failure?
- How can we foster resilience in all members of our teaching and learning community?