Failure in Making: Professional Development
for Informal Educators
This website is to support you in creating a culture of reflection for your educators’ professional growth in supporting failure moments during STEAM-making activities, including workshops, drop-in sessions, and camps. We focus on failure because the important role it plays in increasing youth’s persistence, motivation, self-efficacy, and agency within fields that encourage innovation and creativity.
Plan a Professional Development Sequence
The FiM Professional Development section of this website presents the goals of this PD in two sections: 1) setting context and 2) recording and reflecting. The activities in Setting Context will ground your thinking about Failure in Making while the Recording and Reflecting activities are meant to be iterative as you improve your practice. You will find activities and resources to serve as an outline for your own PD or you can dive into the FiM Resources to find different activities for the PD goals. Our hope is to support you in creating your own custom professional development. For inspiration, see example agendas developed by partner organizations.
Learn about Failure in Making
If you are interested in what other institutions have done with this training, check out the FiM Partners page. Each partner institution has a page highlighting some of their work.
If you are interested in the research, our main research page highlights findings while the Adult Focused page showcases a study focused specifically on adult visitors. You will also find research presentations and publications on Failure in Making in this section.
If you have questions or comments please contact us!
