Fail Forward®

Fail Forward® is both a movement and an experiential methodology

 

Fail Forward® is a European movement of educators (facilitators, coaches, teachers, youth workers, social workers,...) who:   

1. Want to change their own perspective on failing

2. Develop their own fail resilience

3. Support the learners they work with in changing their perspective on failing and developing their fail resilience

 

From 2013 till 2017 four educational non-profit organizations in Belgium, Iceland, Norway and the UK got funding from the European Erasmus+ program to develop content on and do research about failing as part of  lifelong (self-directed) learning and to organise training for educators. 

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Key learning outcomes from this project were:

- The core of Fail Forward® is choosing the courage to learn and fail over the comfort of playing small and giving up on your dreams and goals after the first failed attempt. 

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- Failing is an essential part of learning and living. There is only one certainty if you go from your comfort zone into your learning zone and that is that you wil fail sooner or later. So it is important to find ways to constructively deal with failing and to develop your fail resilience. 

 

- Fail-resilience is the ability to deal constructively with failing and to treat it as a learning experience. The core of being resilient is that you can bounce back after failing even when it hurts and triggers emotion. 

 

- Your fail resilience enables you to move from FAIL as the First Attempt In Learning to FAIL as Further Attempts In Learning. Thanks to your fail resilience you don't let the first attempt be the last and you go back in and try again. 

 

Fail Forward® as an experiential methodology offers a curriculum of 30 creative tools for youngsters from 13 till 30 and educators (trainers, facilitators, youth and social workers,...). These tools address developing your fail resilience and changing your perspective on failing.

 

Over 200 educators were introduced to and/or trained in the Fail Forward® methodology and the tools were extensively tested in different educational contexts in Belgium, Iceland, Norway and the UK.

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VDAB, the Flemish unemployment service, offered the curriculum to a team of job coaches and their leader and they are now using it with their clients to work on their fear of failure while searching for a job.