Post Written By: Dr. Naved Bakali, Assistant Professor of Anti-Racism Education (Faculty of Education), University of Windsor
I’m an #OLDFF fellow from the Faculty of Education, participating in provincial conversations about Humanizing Learning as part of the eCampus Ontario-funded #ONHumanLearn project. This infographic relates to the second module that we explored, ‘Students as Agents of Diverse Destinies’. In the second week of the module, where we discussed the ‘now what’ component of the module, a lot of our conversations centred on the notion of failure as a means of growth. Unfortunately, failure in our educational culture is stigmatized and prevents us from seeing failure as a means of growth. In addition to stigmas surrounding failure, we also need to acknowledge the power relations which penalize failure. We see this at all levels from academia, to secondary, to primary education. We also inhibit our own growth in relation to failure because of silly and unjustified fears surrounding ‘imposter syndrome’. This is something we need to shake off, as it prevents our development and growth. One possible way of potentially embracing failure as a means of growth, is by understanding that our vulnerabilities don’t need to be on full display at all times. Rather, we can think of our vulnerability as a dial and ‘turn it up’ or ‘turn it down’ based on how comfortable we are with the people that we are sharing it with.
