Investigating the relationship between failure and learning in science courses.

The Research.

We investigate how undergraduate students experience failures in science courses, and how scientists speak of their educational and professional failures.

We seek to understand how students and scientists navigate failures in their contexts and how we can improve science education to support learning from failure experiences.

A black-and-white image of a notebook page in the foreground that reads "The Science of Failure" in cursive handwriting. The notebook page is leaning on a stack of textbooks.

Research Aims

Characterize how intrapersonal factors that students enter STEM courses with influence their experiences of and responses to failure

Aim 1

Characterize how students’ experiences with failure in a CURE context act to change their intrapersonal factors

Aim 2

Understand how students who hold identities often excluded in STEM disciplines engage with failure in collegiate or scientific settings

Aim 3

Characterize scientists’ coping strategies around educational and professional failures

Aim 4

Understand what supports aid scientists in navigating failure experiences and how scientists harness these supports

Aim 5

Are you a scientist and have stories of failure to share?

If you are a scientist employed in industry, academia, government or non-government organizations, and are willing to share your stories of failure for students to learn from, please reach out to us!

Our research team will be collecting data from scientists around the US during Summer and Fall 2024.

Participating scientists will have the option of having their stories shared on this website for students to learn from!

Get to know the researchers!