Part II
How Teachers Learn
Entrepreneurial Thinking
2 Embracing Risk and Productive Failure
Entrepreneurial Thinking in Action for Chapter 2
Innovation, managed risk taking, proactivity, resilience.Introduction
Risk in education contexts is often associated with exposure to negative out
comes, potentially threatening learning environments in physical or social terms. This chapter is about re-thinking risk for educational contexts by con
necting with a broader understanding of risk. To re-think risk I will draw on ideas from different disciplines and connect these concepts to educational con
texts. The aim of this chapter is to help teachers reposition themselves in rela
tion to risk, as managers of risk, and as innovators in schools.
In Theory
Thinking About Risk
Risk & uncertainty. Risk may appear to be real, immediate, and measurable, or it may seem benign if we are unable to identify it. It may also seem quite subjective, or even imagined, particularly when it elicits intense emotive responses in some people, but not others. The more objectified forms of risk that people can agree upon are often easy to appraise or measure, such as buying a lottery ticket where the probabilities of different outcomes can be accurately calculated. As risk-related outcomes become more difficult to pre
dict, we start to talk more about uncertainty, which is a less measurable form of risk. Uncertainty arises in complex systems such as national education policies where the outcomes may not be known for several years and may be very difficult to define and measure because the system changes. Somewhere between a lottery ticket and the entire education system are schools and class
rooms where both risks and uncertainties can exist.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003285694-4
Vignette 2.1: Oliver, Risk, and Student Behaviours
Oliver manages the uncertainties of student behaviour by adopting a classroom seating plan. At the beginning of the year when he doesn’t know the students very well, there is much uncertainty about behaviour outcomes during his lessons. As the year progresses, Oliver adjusts the seating plan so that within a few weeks he can more accurately predict student behaviours with the refined seating plan. This is an example of an innovative teaching practice that enables positive and negative outcomes to be managed and more accurately appraised by Oliver, thus converting uncertainty into managed risk.
Time. Teachers are always thinking about time. When it comes to risk, time is an important factor because over longer durations of time, risks tend to increase, and in many cases become less measurable and more uncertain.
Because of this relationship with time, it is better to manage risk in a more immediate timeframe, rather than let a risk grow before it is addressed.
Vignette 2.2: Oliver’s Early Days
Oliver recalls as a beginning teacher a situation where he did not act when one of his students repeatedly mis-behaved during a lesson. Within a few minutes other students engaged in the same behaviour and Oliver then had three students to manage instead of just the one. The risk of a negative behaviour outcome increased over time, creating a more difficult situation to manage.
In the chapters that follow we will return to this idea of risk and time to see how it can be built into techniques for achieving positive outcomes while minimising negative outcomes.
Positive or negative. As discussed above, risk can lead to different outcomes that we typically value in terms of being positive, neutral, or negative. This is important to appreciate because many teachers tend to focus on the negative outcomes (e.g., Martin et al., 2018), and by avoiding negative risks, they are also shutting down the possibilities of positive risk outcomes. Risk avoidance behaviours of teachers are problematic because these same behaviours translate to school management practices.
The approach to risk by school leaders as managers becomes visible by observing the priorities managers emphasise, which we can label as either
Embracing Risk and Productive Failure 15 compliance management or strategic management approaches (MacDonald et al., 2018): (1) A compliance approach focuses on conforming with rules, guide
lines, and policies, because such conformance minimises negative risks such as the possibility of failing through innovation; (2) A strategic approach focuses on the strategic vision and direction of an organisation, and shows a willingness to manage risk with the view of achieving positive outcomes, while managing compliance as a necessary and equal priority with strategy. A balanced, inno
vative organisation addresses both compliance and strategy and is aware of this constant trade-off in priorities. Managing negative and positive risks is also essential in teaching if we are to be innovative teachers.
Vignette 2.3 with Oliver demonstrates how the way we think about risk is very important, because it determines our level of proactivity in relation to innovation. If Oliver had followed a compliance approach to avoid negative risks his students would have missed the positive risk outcomes associated with experiencing a new way of writing in biology.
Risk appetite. Our level of proactivity in taking on innovation may be descri
bed in terms of our risk appetite (Aven, 2013). Risk appetite is a concept used to describe how much risk we are willing to be exposed to, and importantly how much risk we are willing to manage. Risk appetite varies with our personal or professional experiences and influences the cultural climate of professions and organisations (see Case Studies 9.1 and 10.4).
Vignette 2.3: Oliver’s Strategic Approach
Oliver wants to improve the engagement of his biology students. He decides to change the genre of an assessment to a health promotion poster instead of the more traditional science report with which his students were accustomed. For most students there was a clear positive outcome because they engaged with a less formal style of writing and the oppor
tunity to use diagrams and text to creatively apply their knowledge in an authentic genre. A smaller number of students needed support in shifting their thinking about writing styles. Before making these changes there were clear negative risks that Oliver had to manage, so that the positive risks of improving student engagement could be achieved. Additionally, Oliver also ensured he complied with the school’s curriculum policies and guidelines on assessment by interpreting them with strategic intent and risk management in mind, rather than risk avoidance.
In both entrepreneurial and human capability development contexts, risk appetite may be regarded as a non-cognitive capability because it is deeply related to our emotionality. Heckman (2011) suggests that such non-cognitive capabilities are initially developed from our informal learning experiences that
often start in early childhood. As young children we learn responses, habits, and behaviours in relation to everyday situations by observing our parents, relatives, and early childhood teachers. By imitating responses, habits, and behaviours, young children become youth and young adults with their own level of risk appetite that we may call an attribute associated with resilience. Attributes are a little more fixed than behaviours and skills, but they can also be changed through transformative learning experiences at any stage of life.
Encouraging people at all ages, including teachers, to take on new learning experiences is therefore important if they are to develop a risk appetite for innovative thinking, agency, and leadership. Building risk appetite is not about taking unnecessary risks. It is about building self-confidence to do something different, or something that is unfamiliar. The more we expose ourselves to learning new things in new contexts, the more confident we become and the more we grow and increase our risk appetite.
Vignette 2.4: Oliver Builds Confidence
Feedback from Oliver’s students and his Head of Department (HOD) about his health promotion poster initiative boosted Oliver’s confidence. At the end of that year, Oliver was willing to take on a larger innovation by writing a novel unit plan for the Grade 10 student cohort. Over time he was able to grow his risk appetite and learn to lead larger, more impactful innovations.
The important element in developing a higher level of risk appetite is to develop the skills and confidence for managing risk, which is not the same as simply risk taking. Some teachers may view Oliver as taking on greater risk, but it is more likely that Oliver does not see himself as a risk taker, but as a risk manager. How this works can be related to our own personal locus of control, which is another way of describing the origins of risk appetite.
Locus of control. Locus of control is a psychological concept associated with learned behaviours that describe how a person thinks about their self in relation to risk and life experiences (Hsiao et al., 2016). It is described as a continuum from external to internal. If someone has an external locus of control, it means they would see the future as something that’s outside of their own control and mostly shaped by factors that are external to them. With an external locus of control, a person would tend to be risk averse or even risk avoiding. A risk- averse teacher would look to the challenges of being innovative by focusing on the barriers to change, such as needing to comply with a curriculum, not having enough time, being embarrassed by failure, or running into conflict with administrators (cf. Martin et al., 2018).
On the other end of the continuum, a person with an internal locus of control will see the future as being within their reach and something they can
Embracing Risk and Productive Failure 17 shape and create. In entrepreneurial literature this sense of being able to ima
gine a new future and then shape that future is called effectuation (Sarasvathy, 2008; Sarasvathy & Venkataraman, 2011). People with an internal locus of control will typically feel a level of confidence that enables them to take on risk because they have a sense that they can manage it by learning new skills and behaviours or by applying previously learned skills and behaviours.
Vignette 2.5: How Do You Rate Oliver?
Thinking about Oliver’s vignettes above, where do you rate Oliver on the external–internal locus of control continuum: High external, High internal, or somewhere in between?
Teachers Embracing Risk
High and low innovators. To understand a little more about ourselves as tea
chers and our relationship with innovation and risk, we look next to a recent study of lead teachers in the United States. Martin et al. (2018) investigated 35 lead teachers with responsibilities at classroom, school, and district levels, and found 23% to be high innovators, 23% low innovators, and 54% to be medium innovators. When thinking about risk, high innovators tend to focus on stu
dents’ learning and how they could create change to improve learning. In contrast, low innovators tend to focus on teachers, the negative impact that risk taking may have on their career, how others may perceive them, and the bar
riers preventing them from being innovative. These different areas of focus shaped what teachers perceived to be innovative. Low innovators looked at innovation only within the classroom or the immediate environment where they could maintain control and minimise onlookers from outside. High innovators looked to improvements in student learning by partnering with others in community-based projects or working with others internationally.
Amongst teachers, high and low innovators have very much opposite world views. The things that low innovators see as high risk, such as proposing a new curriculum or adopting student assignments that involve problem solving, are viewed as low risk by high innovators. High innovators see themselves as future creators and risk managers, whereas low innovators see high innovators as risk takers. What is interesting about the study by Martin et al. (2018) is that the similarities and differences between high and low-innovation teachers align closely with studies comparing risk perceptions and behaviours of entrepreneurs versus non-entrepreneurs. These findings point to the relevance of applying entrepreneurial thinking to teacher education and professional learning if we are to develop teachers with the confidence to embrace risk and develop cap
abilities for becoming student-focused innovators.
Creating risk for learning. An important theme running through the above discussion on risk and risk appetite is that the confidence to be innovative can be developed through learning experiences (Case Studies 9.3, 10.4). While you may understand the concepts by reading about them, you cannot change your risk appetite for innovation without experiencing and learning through risk. In this section you will consider a key pedagogical strategy in entrepreneurial education, which is about creating risk for learning. This means creating learning situations that involve complexity, imbued with risk, at an appropriate level for specific learners to experience risk, it’s emotive consequences, and their responses to risk. This form of experiential learning is about engaging feelings and emotions as the focus of learning because uncertainty elicits discomforting emotions in most people. You will apply these ideas further in Chapters 4 and 5, but here in this chapter you should think about the process of learning through risk management experiences.
A practical way of thinking about your risk management learning experi
ences is to frame them as learning events, which is an idea that will help you connect your risk-associated emotions with what and how you are learning.
Ritchie (2018) describes learning events as disruptions to our ordinary everyday situations that typically involve noticeable emotional fluctuations, which elicit change in social structures such as ideas. Emotional fluctuations are important in learning because an emotion may be thought of as a subjective feeling about something. The something that is the focal point within an emotion is always an idea which is the social structure or cognitive element we associate with learning.
An example of creating learning events and learner emotions is the use of laboratory demonstrations in school science (see Bellocchi et al., 2018). Bel
locchi et al. (2018) document a science demonstration where a sense of risk is created for students as the teacher presents the demonstration equipment comprising a large tub of cool tap water and a small bottle containing green food dye, salt, and hot water. With the equipment assembled and the class sit
ting and focused on the lab equipment, the teacher generates a discussion about what might happen to the contents of the bottle if it is placed at the bottom of the large tub of cool water, letting the green fluid out of the bottle. This situation creates uncertainty for the students, which is amplified by a brief class discussion where students contribute a range of conflicting ideas and predic
tions, adding further uncertainty. Students are then told to watch closely and when the green fluid is released the class erupts into a mix of surprise, excite
ment, and a chorus of chatter as they start to explain what they observed. With the students’ attention, curiosity, and imagination captured, what follows is a lively discussion where the science is deconstructed and explained through class conversation and debate.
In this type of learning event, risk has played a major role in shaping stu
dents’ emotions and the shift in emotions over the duration of the demonstra
tion: from curiosity to anticipation to excitement. It is risky for students because they are engaging in speculation and open debate, thus risking peer
Embracing Risk and Productive Failure 19 rebuttal. It is risky for the teacher because science does not always work in practice, and because the teacher does not know what students’ responses will be. But it is the level of risk for the students that elicits emotive intensity and makes such events remarkable, memorable, and impactful for learning (Kahneman, 2011).
Experiencing risk for learning. As you read this book and engage with the learning activities at the end of each chapter, you should use these activities to build your own innovation project. If you adopt this strategy, you will find yourself engaging with a complex, learner-directed project involving some peer collabora
tion. These learning activities aim to lead you through an open-ended learning project involving opportunities to grapple with complex ideas, group dynamics, and exposure to risk. As you engage with such learning experiences, I encourage you to start thinking about how you feel, and how you may be experiencing risk.
An important part of these experiences is the idea of productive failure, which is explored in a teaching context in Case Study 10.4 and in the following section.
Problem solving and productive failure. In the above sections I discussed how low-innovation teachers viewed students learning through problem solving as a high-risk practice for themselves and their students. In some ways the low- innovation teacher is correct because the learning sciences research shows that problem solving does lead to their students experiencing failure. However, when problem-based failure is experienced by students it has been shown to be a positive and highly effective learning strategy (Kapur & Bielaczyc, 2012).
Students who engaged with complex problem solving also engaged with risk, which was evidenced by experiences of small failures. By working through those failures, they improve their capacity for doing both routine and complex problem solving in subjects such as mathematics. As a teaching methodology Kapur and Bielaczyc (2012) have described this as learning through design for productive failure. Once again, the low-innovation teacher who minimises risk for themselves is also minimising negative risk for their students, and the stu
dents are losing out on the positive learning benefits of productive, managed failure. To explore examples of the ways in which teachers may embrace the idea of productive failure you should reflect on Case Studies 9.2, 9.3, and 10.4.
Fail fast, learn fast. Earlier you were introduced to the link between time and risk: As time increases, the size and uncertainty of a risk may increase if it is not addressed. As teachers, if we are to innovate and learn through failure, or situate our students to learn through failure, then any failure must be fast, so that the benefits of learning are also fast. This is evident in productive failure because it is not about setting a project for students and walking away. Learning through pro
ductive failure is an iterative process of small, fast failures, scaffolded through con
versations with the teacher. Similarly, in the contexts for your own project innovations, you do not want to spend weeks developing what you think is a perfect innovation that fails catastrophically: In Chapters 5 and 6, I introduce techniques to manage failure in innovation contexts. Evidence of learning through incremental failure in innovative teacher-led projects can be seen in Case Studies 10.2 and 10.4.
Observations from Practice
It’s all about self-confidence. Embracing risk and being innovative is about building self-confidence. This is the same for teachers learning to be innovative and for their students. It takes time and starts with small steps.
Reframing failure. Confidence in being an innovator comes through learning and doing new things, taking on new challenges and learning to fail success
fully. Learning to fail successfully means treating each failure as a lesson, and any loss or cost of failure as a tuition fee. This is a positive way to reframe failure and position yourself to achieve your goals.
Focus on your why, not the scoreboards of life. Don’t be distracted by the scoreboards of life. Stay focused on learning and on the reasons why you do what you do. A champion football player does not become a champion by standing in the middle of the field fixated on the scoreboard. They get in, play the game, watch the ball, and contribute to a team. With a focus on the game the scoreboard looks after itself. Being fixated on the scoreboard is like the low-innovation teachers described by Martin et al. (2018), who tend to be overly focused on their own careers or what others may think of them, instead of being focused on the main game, which is how to improve student learning.
Embrace diversity. Being a perfectionist is the opposite of being an excellent innovator. To fail fast and learn fast we need to let go of the idea that we can achieve perfection and we need to value imperfection and diversity. Embracing imperfection is quite consistent with embracing diversity because these ways of thinking involve an appreciation that there is no single perfect outcome for anything we do. For this reason, diversity and imperfection are more closely related to creativity and innovation than striving toward an ideal of perfectionism.
Learning Activities
Activity 2.1: Innovation heuristic (adapted from Martin et al., 2018). The aim of this heuristic is not to judge yourself, but to use it over a number of weeks as you develop your habits towards being more innovative. Using the heuristic will keep you thinking about innovation. Rate your current level of innovation on the following heuristic. Rate each statement by giving yourself a score with 0 as Strongly Disagree through to 5 as Strongly Agree.
a I communicate my innovations with a vision that attracts peer participation.
b I get innovations done by bringing partners and/or peers onboard.
c Usually, I create my own ideas when I want to innovate.
d I like being innovative because I like doing things others have not done.
Add up your score from the above responses. Low innovators score around 12, medium innovators score around 13.5, high innovators score around 17.
Come back to this heuristic and re-evaluate yourself every few weeks.
Embracing Risk and Productive Failure 21 Activity 2.2: Listen for risk taking around you. Innovators and non-innova
tors are everywhere: They are our peers, our students, and our family members.
The aim of this activity is to get you to listen to other people in your envir
onment and to identify innovators and non-innovators:
a Listen. Take some time to listen to what is going on around you. Listen to issues your students or peers may be experiencing.
b Responses. How do they respond to problems? Do they suggest solutions, or do they identify barriers? Do they act and innovate? What level of risk appetite do they have? and where is their locus of control on the external–
internal continuum? How are these ideas evident in the language they use, and their actions or inactions?
Activity 2.3: Thinking about your teaching. Take a few minutes to think about your area of teaching and ponder the following questions:
a What learning processes are involved such as inquiry, design, creating, evaluating, analysing etc.?
b How can these processes go wrong for you as the teacher or for your students?
c How might you design failure into these processes so that students do not get things right on the first or second attempt?
d How could you model dealing with failure by designing failure into the way you teach?
e What entrepreneurial skills and behaviours could you be teaching by designing failure into processes? (See Chapter 1, Table 1.1.)
f What more could students explore about their learning processes and their own capacities for dealing with complexity?
g Take your design for productive failure and think about how it might work in your teaching.
Principles for Embracing Risk
a Accept complexity and uncertainty as a normal part of teaching because people are complex.
b Focus on managing risk, without totally avoiding it.
c Look for the positive or upside risks of every situation while being aware, but not afraid, of the negative risks.
d Build your risk appetite by trying new ways of working. Start small and have go.
e Focus innovations on student learning.
f Bring others into your innovation.
g Think of yourself as the creator of your own future.
h Create risk for learning by enabling students to problem solve and be creative.
Conclusion
The concepts, illustrations, and activities in this chapter should by now be prompting you to think about your own experiences with risk, how you might think about risk in the future, and how you might describe your current level of risk appetite. As you progress through this book you will be introduced to techniques for risk management within innovation processes. You are encour
aged to embrace risk; do not be afraid of it, but keep your initial innovations within the scope of your current risk appetite. Your appetite for risk can change over time and may increase once you have cycled through a couple of innovation learning experiences.
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