Teachers hate to fail. We hated to fail at school and tended to be the pupils who understood how to get good grades and how to navigate teacher approval. And if we’re honest about it, we hate to fail in our classrooms, where there is still pressure to be totally in control and all-knowing. 

It’s no wonder that, when headteachers talk to staff about risking new ideas, about being brave and embracing failure, there is a tight smile and nod from the congregated crowd. For many of us, failure does not feel like a realistic option.

In Fear of Failure, published in 1969, Robert Birney suggested that the avoidance of failure boils down to the avoidance of shame. The causes of shame are multivariate: childhood upbringing, our own conceptions of what success looks like or even our current school culture. Other research shows that shame and fear of failure causes huge stress and anxiety in staff, leads to exhaustion, perfectionism and burnout (Gustafsson, 2016) and a resistance to exploring or trying out anything new (Covington, 1992).

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During lockdown, teachers were forced to try something new - teaching online - and many found this constant exposure to potential failure exhausting and debilitating. It’s understandable that teachers are desperate to get back to delivering lessons in the way they always have.

But it seems unlikely that we will go back to the way things were. Even when coronavirus allows us to teach in normal classrooms, the rapid changes in technology and the fourth industrial revolution mean that constant change is likely to be the only thing we, in education, can reliably predict.

So, how do we support staff through this? How do we help them try to step away from that fear and anxiety, and embrace exploration, vulnerability and potential failure?

Shift perspective

Research suggests the key is moving from fear to curiosity. Both neuro and evolutionary psychologists suggest that, when confronted with new and difficult circumstances, our brain either treats it as a potential threat or as something interesting to explore. 

One response provokes anxiety, stress response and adrenaline while the other results in exploration, play and intellectual focus. We can see it in animals when confronted with a new situation - that tension between whether they freeze or run, or whether they explore and play.

What we want to do is move our staff away from seeing something new as a threat to viewing it as something interesting to explore. 

Name the fear

Research suggests that the best way to shift an individual’s perspective is to encourage them to name the fear - what is actually happening here and where did that fear originate? They should consider the worst-case scenario and identify how they would respond. And, when their anxiety response starts to shift towards thinking about and exploring the problem rather than being rooted in the emotional response to it, we should encourage them to be curious about the situation and their own feelings.

Ditch the ‘conquer culture’ 

More widely, however, we need to shift our school cultures. If we, as leaders, spend a lot of time modelling our own avoidance of failure, ensuring we only present perfection and with a single focus on achievement, then it will be hard to encourage young people to take risks and explore new territory.

Essentially, achievement cultures are all about failure. We need to ask our communities to look at new initiatives as opportunities to learn and explore rather than simply to succeed and conquer. We should ask questions such as: 

• What can we learn about what works and doesn’t work with this new programme?
• What are the obstacles we see? 
• Who has ideas on how we could improve this system? 
• What makes it hard to use?

Daniele Harford is deputy head of teaching, learning and innovation at Solihull and principal-elect at The Ladies College, Guernsey