Students Overcoming Fear Of Failure

“Students Overcoming Fear Of Failure” The fear of failure is deeply ingrained into many students of all ages. At its very core failure is linked to a student’s self-worth, the feeling that they matter, and failure is viewed as a blow against their self-worth. For this reason many students put themselves through lots of stress in order to not fail, and this can have negative long term consequences. Fortunately, parents and teachers can help their students develop a more healthy view on failure and avoid the fear.

Research has shed light on the cognitive processes behind this fear. The ability to achieve their goals, and the quality of the product is critical to maintaining a student’s self worth.This means that students must believe that they can do the work, and repeated failures, such as a bad grade, make students’ belief in their ability to succeed diminish which leads to diminished self-worth. This might cause them to become defensive or make excuses about their failure that preserves their self-worth.

There are four main schools of thought that students have regarding failure. The first is when students love learning for the sake of learning and view failure as a way to grow rather than a slight at their intelligence. These kids mostly have parents who praise their successes and rarely reprimand their failures. The second are those who succeed only to avoid failure and often through unhealthy levels of work. They will often brag about not studying, only to stay up all night because for these students it is not about succeeding, it is about not failing and preserving their self-worth. The third kind are often confused for slackers. They believe that if they try hard and fail then their ability is not there and this impacts their self-worth, but these student’s don’t try and this failure does not affect their self-confidence. The last type is the hardest to motivate. These students have already accepted their failure as lack of ability and don’t try to succeed because they do not believe that they have the ability to. Both the third and fourth types often have parents that rarely praise success and ridicule failure often.

Fortunately there are things that can be done to help kids overcome their fear of failure. Effort should be emphasized over ability. This is done by giving feedback on good effort, and studies show that this kind of praise motivates students. Parents should also teach students that their self-worth should be tied to themselves as human beings rather than a grade and that failure is a part of life. Finally building a positive relationship with students will help them stay motivated to persevere through difficult times.

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