The Innovation Centre at the Institute for Adult Learning, Singapore has embarked on an experimental development project to translate principles of Productive Failure (PF) for Adult Learning. The aim is to leverage these principles to facilitate deep learning amongst learners and contribute towards building critical core competencies within the Training and Adult Education sector.

The project involves on a select group of Adult Educators who co-develop a framework / toolbox / guideline on PF for Adult Learning through insights and findings from designing and trialing PF interventions in real learning environments.

Participants were selected based on the diversity required in the project.

What is Productive Failure?

An empirically tested deep learning pedagogical approach, PF¹ embodies constructivist principles, where failure is deliberately designed into the learning, to imbue learners with resiliency and learning agility, much needed skills during this “reskilling emergency” that was raised at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in January 2020, where it was said that more than 1 billion people need to be reskilled by 2030 as jobs are transformed by the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (World Economic Forum, 2020)².

The PF learning environment is designed deliberately to bring about failure in a task so that learners have the opportunity to innovate solutions while exploring complex and novel problems. This guided exploration also allows learners to activate and differentiate relevant prior knowledge, generate multiple representations of problems, and thereby develop skills needed to solve "wicked" real-world problems.

To find out more about the relevance of PF to adult learning, IAL organized a special innovLogue session on 18 August 2022 with the purpose of creating awareness as well as brainstorming together on ‘Leveraging Failure for L&D success’.

At this session, we bring together leading experts from Zurich, Switzerland, Singapore and Sydney, Australia were brought together to discuss and showcase how ‘learning from failure’, might be leveraged for learning and development. Watch it and do not miss out the in-depth panel discussion on PF for adult learning towards the end of the session. You can also watch the webinar innovLogue session here

How is the project structured?

The project is designed in 3 phases – experiment / evaluate, verify / validate and finally consolidate / finalize, as can be seen in the diagram below. The first two are iterations of design & development workshops. Each iteration includes, not just design & development, but also the trial and testing of interventions; following which the participating Adult Educators (AEs) convene to discuss and learn from each other to surface insightful practices and factors impacting the application of PF principles for Adult Learning.

This would, then result in artefacts and case studies which will further inform the TAE and shape our teaching practices and learning offerings. Participating AEs are expected to come from diverse backgrounds in terms of domain expertise and learner types to allow for as wide a field for experimentation and identification of key factors in PF design for adult learning, thus ensuring the final output would be practicable to the broader TAE community.