SMARTEN
  • Contact
  • About
    • Conference 2020
    • Join the Student Team!
    • Leadership
    • Student Media Team
    • Student Team >
      • Student Team 18/19
  • Take part
    • Groups >
      • Lab Group
      • SIGs
      • Discussion Groups
    • Participate in Research
  • Funding
    • Funding FAQs
    • Funded Research 2019
    • Funded Research 2020
  • Blog
    • Blog Post Guidance
  • Resources
    • COVID 19 Study >
      • Suggestions following Covid Research
    • Reading List
    • Review of National Surveys
    • Interviews
    • Newsletter
  • Mental Health Research Matters

Blog.

The SMaRteN blog is where we hear from practitioners, academics, students and others about their work in the student mental health sector. 
We're always looking for new Blog posts: to contribute, email smarten@kcl.ac.uk or read our Blog Post Guidance.

Fear of Failure in Students

3/12/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Students in the UK are probably less likely to fail than ever before. For instance, the proportion of first class honours awarded has tripled since 1994.(1) Yet fear of academic failure has risen, particularly among girls here, who now rank fifth in the world for fear of failure.(2)
 
Here I explore what can be done to reduce this fear. I’d welcome insights on this from fellow researchers.

Embracing Failure
A girls’ school in Australia is normalising and embracing failure.(3) During the school's "Failure Week", teachers display examples of their own failures.  "We want our students to recognise that failure, and making mistakes, is a really crucial part of learning," says head of counselling, Bridget McPherson. In the past, teachers used positive reinforcement to boost students' self-esteem. Unfortunately this didn’t have the desired effects, instead offering a "false sense" of how well students were doing.
 
Rachel Simmons, a leadership development specialist explains that those who are "failure deprived" (a term coined by staff at Stanford and Harvard) have poorer coping skills and are much more likely to experience depression and anxiety. Smith College, for instance, offers a "Failing Well" initiative.(4) The program also encourages resilience, offers workshops on impostor syndrome and perfectionism and aims to destigmatise failure by making it known that it is OK and common to "fail". Similar projects normalising setbacks and struggles are available at Harvard (The Success Failure Project), Stanford (Stanford, I Screwed Up!) and Princeton (The Princeton Perspective Project).(5)
 
This approach is also now being embraced in a number of schools in the UK, particularly in the independent sector, including Shrewsbury School and Wimbledon High School.(6)
 
Fearful Females
Females are far more likely to experience anxiety around fear of failure than their male counterparts, even though they do better academically than boys at school and are more likely to secure places at university. In a 2013 study, female engineering students had lower levels of self-esteem and self-efficacy stemming from perceived inadequacy in competing with their male counterparts in a career area deemed more traditionally masculine. However, this doesn’t explain why female students should be more anxious in subjects not deemed traditionally male – suggesting that more research is needed here.
 
The Value of Self Efficacy
Frank Haber, a Psychological Counsellor in Germany explains that students with more reflective self-efficacy (a belief in their ability to deal with different situations) experience lower levels of anxiety, believe in their capabilities to overcome challenges and focus on potential gains rather than losses.(7) Furthermore, these students have a "cross-the-bridge-when-it-comes" approach to failure, allowing them to consider consequences should failure actually occur.  
 
Reimagining Failure
In 2015, a study at the University of Bergen in Norway investigated the effects of an 8-week mindfulness based stress reduction programme on 29 students experiencing academic evaluation anxiety.(8) By the end of the study, the students had developed between them a mixture of finding an inner sense of calm, focusing better, greater feelings of self-acceptance in the face of difficult situations, and reframing the concept of fear as curiosity when experiencing challenges. Students also found that sharing experiences with other students helped them to feel less alone and normalised their struggles.
 
Conclusions
Initiatives to help students recognise failure as a fact of life, from which they can learn, can have positive outcomes. Instead of bringing doom and gloom this may reduce fear of failure. Recognising failure as an experience to learn from can help strengthen students' resilience, promote the development of healthy coping mechanisms, and allow for better reflection - all important strategies needed in preparation for success at university and in the wider world beyond it.

Sophie Izzard
Researcher, Student Mental Health project team, Health Action Campaign
info@healthactioncampaign.org.uk

References
 
1.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-40654933
2.https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/dec/17/british-girls-fear-of-failure-pisa-ranking
3.https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-school-teaching-students-that-its-ok-to-fail-20170827-gy4zo1.html
4.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/fashion/fear-of-failure.html
5.https://nypost.com/2019/04/04/failure-is-an-option-colleges-try-to-ease-student-fear-and-anxiety/
6. https://blog.gdst.net/post/17155939514/when-failure-is-an-option
7. https://www.eaie.org/blog/helping-students-overcome-fear-of-failure.html
8. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3402/qhw.v10.27990
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    January 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018

    Categories

    All
    Academic Identity
    Anthropology
    Assessment Design
    Belonging
    Coping
    Counselling
    Creative Arts
    Culture
    Ethnography
    Learning Analytics
    Midwifery Students
    Mixed Methods
    Nursing Students
    Participate In Research
    Pedagogy
    Peer Support
    Perfectionism
    PhD Students
    Positive Psychology

    RSS Feed

    Your Blog

    We are using this blog to help connect stakeholders across Higher Education interested in student mental health. If you have a project you are working on or an idea you'd like to develop, why not write your own blog post for us?

Welcome to the SMaRteN Network! We hope to hear from you soon.

Keep us up to date with your research! We love to showcase members' work and initiatives in student mental health research. 


Email

smarten@kcl.ac.uk
Sign up
  • Contact
  • About
    • Conference 2020
    • Join the Student Team!
    • Leadership
    • Student Media Team
    • Student Team >
      • Student Team 18/19
  • Take part
    • Groups >
      • Lab Group
      • SIGs
      • Discussion Groups
    • Participate in Research
  • Funding
    • Funding FAQs
    • Funded Research 2019
    • Funded Research 2020
  • Blog
    • Blog Post Guidance
  • Resources
    • COVID 19 Study >
      • Suggestions following Covid Research
    • Reading List
    • Review of National Surveys
    • Interviews
    • Newsletter
  • Mental Health Research Matters