Children’s Museum of Houston
Why Failure in Making?
We had made a change in how we staffed the floor of our museum, with a focus on making sure we had seasoned professional educators available on the floor to provide deeper engagement for our visitors and implement our various STEAM and Maker programs. We also had a robust outreach department doing similar programming at schools and community centers across the city of Houston. This seemed like a fantastic opportunity to continue developing those educators, and the topic of failure in making was so relevant to everything we do that it just seemed like a perfect fit.
I think identifying learner types and deciding on how to approach each type in each situation. I think that was a really cool one. I think it was good for the educators on the floor to think through how just the simple design of an activity can affect not only how failure happens, but how kids react to that. I think those two things were the biggest takeaways for them. (Lead Facilitator)
What is Failure
From the outset, we saw failure as integral to the maker experience. It provided children with opportunities to build resilience, rethink their approaches, and try again. We often emphasized that, much like in coding where 90% of the work is debugging, failure is simply a step in the creative process rather than an endpoint.
Through this work, we came to view failure as a critical moment in the engineering design process — both a learning opportunity and a potential tipping point. Failure can lead to growth and eventual success, but it can also bring frustration or discourage further attempts.
failure-based activity
Our failure-based activity was “balancing act.” Learners built a balancing sculpture using materials such as pencils, cardboard, and washers.
one failure moment or challenge
When introducing the “failure buckets” framework (failure caused by the educator, by the child, or by the environment), participants initially struggled to move beyond discussing environmental and child-related failures. It was difficult for them to reflect on their own role and personal reactions to failure. By the end of the process, we saw promising shifts as educators began to engage in deeper self-reflection. This experience showed us that with continued use of video-based reflection, we could further support educators in examining their own practices and learning from them.
What did We learn?
We learned that failure is as much an opportunity for educator growth as it is for our visitors. Facilitators often focus on helping children persist through challenges, but this experience reminded us that staff also need opportunities to process their own discomfort with failure. By participating in this process and open discussion around the experience, we felt like our educators were able to recognize different ways that failure shows up and use those insights to better support children’s creative risk-taking.
one insight or practice We Continue
One persistent goal is the importance of thoughtful facilitation in the maker space, so as we program for the area we are always considering how the design of an activity and our interactions with learners can shape their experience of failure and experimentation. We are currently applying this understanding as we develop a new exhibit centered on prototyping and the creative process to make sure we are encouraging risk-taking, iteration and learning from failure.
About us
Our Mission: We improve the trajectories of children in Greater Houston through innovative, child-centered learning.
The Houston region has one of the largest child populations in the United States and Children’s Museum Houston serves an audience of more than 1 million children and families each year. Children’s Museum Houston is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization that relies on private and public contributions. When you support us, you can feel confident that your contribution directly benefits the children of Houston.