Productive Failure
Unlocking Deeper Learning Through the Science of Failing
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Productive Failure
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Tim Fannon
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By:
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Manu Kapur
About this listen
Productive Failure shows you how to design the experience of failing. Research shows that repeated experiences of intriguing, constructive failure can help students develop creativity and learn more deeply. When carefully curated, failure can become a signal for learning, not the noise detracting from it. Learners gain a lifelong readiness to push themselves outside of their comfort zones, using setbacks as launchpads.
The principles in this book are powerful for anyone taking charge of and designing their own lifelong learning. This book unpacks the science of productive failure and describes design principles that let you harness productive failure for your own benefit.
- Learn and understand the science of failure
- Apply the research-based Productive Failure framework in classrooms, teams, groups, and organizational settings
- Learn techniques to deepen learning experiences
- Reach new levels of critical thinking, innovation, and success by making failure the norm and learning how to cope with it
This fascinating and actionable book is a must for educators, parents, managers, leaders, and anyone who needs to help others (or themselves) learn how to learn.
©2025 Manu Kapur (P)2025 Tantor MediaKapur shows why cognition (thinking) and affect (feeling) are coupled in every real learning moment. That “can’t-quite-solve-it” tension isn’t a bug; it’s the Zeigarnik engine that keeps us leaning in until we close the loop. The book turns that psychological cliff-hanger into a safe, structured pedagogy.
What I loved:
• The 4 As (Activation, Awareness, Affect, Assembly). From priming prior knowledge to assembling concepts, Kapur maps the emotional cadence of learning.
• Direct Instruction vs Productive Failure. After multiple classroom and lab studies, PF routinely delivers deeper conceptual understanding and far better transfer than teaching first and practising later — in some cases rivaling the gains of a full year with a strong teacher.
• Lego blocks & p-prims. We don’t stack facts; we rearrange intuitive “little pieces” of understanding. Contrast and comparison make the critical features pop.
• Design principles you can actually use. Endowed progress, goal gradient, desirable difficulties, pre-testing that reduces mind-wandering — all translated into clear moves for teachers, leaders, and self-learners.
Kapur also dismantles the “basic knowledge fallacy”: it’s not just what you know, but how you learned it that determines whether you can transfer it, create with it, and keep it. Done poorly, failure discourages. Done well, it builds resilience, curiosity, and genuine expertise.
The line I’ll keep: “The first job of teaching is not to teach; it’s to prepare the novice to see with an expert’s eyes.” That’s the heart of this book — and why it matters far beyond classrooms. If you lead teams, coach kids, or simply want to learn better yourself, this is a field guide to designing struggle without stigma.
In a nutshell: Fail first, learn later — by design.
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Reviewed after hosting Manu on The Innovation Show.
Fail First, Learn Later
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