Productive Failure

Contrary to the fairly established notion in the learning sciences that un-scaffolded processes rarely lead to meaningful learning, this study reports a hidden efficacy of such processes and a method for extracting it. Compared to scaffolded, well-structured problem-solving groups, un-scaffolded, ill-structured problem-solving groups struggled with defining and solving the problems. Their discussions were chaotic and divergent, resulting in poor group performance. However, despite failing in their problem-solving efforts, these participants outperformed their counterparts in the well-structured condition on transfer measures, suggesting a latent productivity in the failure. The study’s contrasting-case design provided participants in the un-scaffolded condition with an opportunity to contrast the ill-structured problems that they had solved in groups with the well-structured problems they solved individually afterwards. This contrast facilitated a spontaneous transfer, helping them perform significantly better on the individual ill-structured problem-solving tasks subsequently. Implications of productive failure for the development of adaptive expertise are discussed.