“Failure” gets an undeserved bad reputation in education. Research stretching back to the earliest days of cognitive psychology suggests that we may learn more from failure than from success 9 .

However, many educational practices, such as grading, intrinsically punish and stigmatize failure 5 instead of celebrating it for what it is: an opportunity for deeper understanding Converging evidence suggests that letting students struggle to figure out a problem before starting direct instruction actually boosts their conceptual understanding of the topic 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 6 , 9 , 10 .