Anja Jurgenssen
How Failure And Humour Can Improve Learning
Ever found you remember something better when you’re having a giggle? Guest poster Anja Jurgenssen how her career in policing taught her that failure and humour can be used to improve learning.
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I joined the Police in 1991 and trained at two police training colleges as part of a modular course. It was during this time I ‘met’ PC Hellbent, an officer so hell-bent on self-destruction that everything he did was the stuff of nightmares. Hellbent wasn’t a real person, but a fictitious amalgamation of incompetent, lazy and corrupt caricatures brought together into one character. I watched Hellbent on wobbly VHS training videos for hours and I laughed a lot… but I also learned a lot too. Hellbent was the shining example of how to get it wrong, every time, and I learned a lot by watching him.
Years later, I found myself involved in training and like Hellbent, I used humour in various ways. This included scenario-based practical exercises involving new recruits to policing, and also very experienced officers, to reinforce how to do something correctly, by watching someone get it completely wrong.
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Learning By Getting Things Wrong
Conventional pedagogy will often focus on the ‘correct’ way to do things. While this can be crucial in many settings and in many topics, it can sometimes stifle creativity. Learning the wrong way (reverse learning) in a funny scenario can encourage more innovative ways of solving a problem based on earlier knowledge-based inputs.
When experiencing the consequences of an incorrect approach to something, we can all gain a greater understanding of the intricacies of a process. As an example, I love languages and I am equally enthusiastic (for that read incompetent) in several. Making mistakes in the true Officer Crabtree style from BBC’s TV series ‘Allo ‘Allo in pronunciation or grammar can be cringeworthy.
For example, years ago I walked into a Portuguese shop and confidently asked for a packet of insurance, which still makes me laugh today. But I’ve developed a more profound understanding of the correct way to communicate in different languages when someone has stared at me blankly or just burst out laughing at my terrible pronunciation.
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Fail In The Classroom, Succeed In The Real World
The consequences of making a mistake can loom heavily on some learners and the thought of failure can be daunting. However, learning how to do something wrong and in a humorous way can also be liberating when it later helps you in the real world.
From my own experiences, in one well-known police training scenario, the learner is faced with a frantic and distraught adult who describes losing Colin. Colin is 4 years old, last seen running towards a busy road wearing a black jacket and red wellies. The aim is to teach the officer not to take action before understanding exactly what they are facing. But in their eagerness to help find Colin at the persistence of the person they are talking with, many forget to go through the well-established questioning process. It is only later that they find out that Colin is not a small child but a much-loved dog!
A far-fetched scenario that could never happen in real life surely? Well, it happened to me early on in my service, so it was lucky that I paid attention during training (unlike some colleagues who didn’t ask the right questions at the time).
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Humour Helps
Life is filled with challenges and setbacks, and learning from mistakes is a vital skill. When we intentionally engage in humorous failures, we build resilience. We learn to adapt, persevere, and develop a positive attitude toward challenges.
Each failure becomes a stepping stone towards improving problem-solving skills and the ability to bounce back. Remembering something that makes a learner laugh could be much easier than remembering something that has been committed to memory by repetition, for example by repeating a definition or phrase.
When we learn the ‘wrong’ way but it makes us laugh, the humour itself acts as an aid to memory. It creates an indelible impression in our mind, making it easier to remember to approach a problem in a particular way. Humour can be an excellent way to remember an important mnemonic, especially if directly linked to a practical situation that the learner will be faced with on a regular basis.
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Getting It Right
Learning the right way is undeniably important, although I contend that there is tremendous value in embracing the art of learning by intentionally showing how to get it wrong and using humour. I’ve lost count of the times a recruit officer has been provided with the name of Mr Kenneth (Ken) Tucky and they have not thought twice about asking for identification. This unconventional approach fosters a mindset of resilience and creativity.
Developing ‘the Copper’s nose’ takes time and often mistakes. Some are comical, such as when a TASER trainer was stunned during a training scenario, more to the amusement of the students than the trainer (well, they’re supposed to be as realistic as possible, aren’t they?). In other more impactive examples, recruits might learn from failure, such as taking one last look along a remote soggy river bank and finding the elderly missing person with dementia, after losing a previous missing person earlier in the year.
Failure and humour in our learning deepens our understanding, enhances our memory, and equips learners with valuable skills. The next time you find yourself designing a learning package, maybe take a minute to consider the potential of achieving longer-lasting learning outcomes through reverse learning and humour. Learning how to get it spectacularly wrong may have as much of an impact on the learner, as how to do something correctly from the start.
Developing ‘the Copper’s nose’ takes time and often mistakes. Some are comical, such as when a TASER trainer was stunned during a training scenario, more to the amusement of the students than the trainer (well, they’re supposed to be as realistic as possible, aren’t they?). In other more impactive examples, recruits might learn from failure, such as taking one last look along a remote soggy river bank and finding the elderly missing person with dementia, after losing a previous missing person earlier in the year.
Failure and humour in our learning deepens our understanding, enhances our memory, and equips learners with valuable skills. The next time you find yourself designing a learning package, maybe take a minute to consider the potential of achieving longer-lasting learning outcomes through reverse learning and humour. Learning how to get it spectacularly wrong may have as much of an impact on the learner, as how to do something correctly from the start.
Anja Jurgenssen (she/her)
Anja Jurgenssen (she/her) is a professional developer of accessible multimedia based learning materials, living in the UK. Visit her LinkedIn here.
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Anja opted to donate her writing fee to Mermaids UK, a charity supporting trans, non-binary and gender-diverse children.
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