Kids do better when told failure is ‘normal’

Children do better at school and feel more upbeat if they are told that failure is a just a part of learning, rather than being pressurised into succeeding at all costs.

"We focused on a widespread cultural belief that equates academic success with a high level of competence and failure with intellectual inferiority," said study author Frederique Autin, postdoctoral researcher, University of Poitiers, France.

"By being obsessed with success, students are afraid to fail, so they are reluctant to take difficult steps to master new material," said Autin, the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General reports.

"Acknowledging that difficulty is a crucial part of learning could stop a vicious circle in which difficulty creates feelings of incompetence that in turn disrupts learning," added Autin, according to a Poitiers statement.

The study could have important implications for teachers, parents and students, said Jean-Claude Croizet, psychology professor atPoitiers who supervised the Autin's doctoral dissertation on the subject.

"People usually believe that academic achievement simply reflects students' inherent academic ability, which can be difficult to change," Croizet said. The findings aere based on experiments involving 242 French sixth graders.

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