While some students are able to successfully persist through their failures, many students struggle with persisting and give up. Although previous studies show that giving up in the face of failure can lead to long-term failure with more negative consequences (e.g. dropout) for students (Borin, Metcalf, & Tietje, 2008), universities struggle with identifying students who are vulnerable to failure (Bell et al., 2018). In order to better support educators in helping students who are less resilient to failures, Zemack-Rugar et al. (2021) created a measure named the Academic Response-to-Failure Scale (ARTFS). 

To examine how to identify marketing students who are prone to giving up in the face of failures and find a way to help them navigate the failures, Zemack-Ruger et al. conducted five studies to validate the ARTFS scale and propose an intervention that can facilitate persistence in these students. The first three studies focused on validating the ARTFS scale while the study 4 and 5 analyzed students’ behaviors following a failure in meeting a deadline of an assigned task and examined the effectiveness of an intervention in helping students build persistence in response to failures. The results suggested that the ARTFS scale is a valid measurement that predicts a student’s tendency to persist or give up. It can also be used for identifying students who are vulnerable to failures through their behaviors following a failure in reaching a task deadline. The ARTFS scale can also be applied to create interventions and differentiated learning environments for those who are vulnerable to giving up in the face of failures such as letting students know that a test grade would not completely affect their overall goal using a grade calculator. 

Zemack-Ruger et al.’s (2021) study provides educators with a tool, (the ARTFS scale), to identify students who are prone to giving up in the face of failures and provide interventions for them to be more persistent. The main focus of this study also relates to EPIC’s study of helping students navigate and persist through their struggles in STEM courses. EPIC also may need to consider creating a failure inventory scale that identifies the students who are vulnerable to failures in STEM, exploring their behaviors and decision-making after failing, and designing interventions accordingly to help students turn their failures into success. 

To check out more about Zemack-Ruger et al.’s (2021) study, check out the link to retrieve the article:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0273475319826628

This post is written by Katelyn Chow. 

Reference:

Bell, E., Fryar, A. H., & Hillman, N. (2018). When intuition misfires: A meta-analysis of research on performance-based funding in higher education. In E. Hazelkorn, H. Coates, & A. C. McCormick (Eds.), Research handbook on quality, performance and accountability in higher

Zemack-Rugar, Y., Corus, C., & Brinberg, D. (2021). The Academic Response-to-Failure Scale: Predicting and Increasing Academic Persistence Post-Failure. Journal of Marketing Education, 43(1), 103-119.

Borin, N., Metcalf, L. E., & Tietje, B. C. (2008). Implementing assessment in an outcome-based marketing curriculum. Journal of Marketing Education, 30, 150-159.

Zemack-Rugar, Y., Corus, C., & Brinberg, D. (2021). The academic response-to-failure scale: Predicting and increasing academic persistence post-failure. Journal of Marketing Education, 43(1), 103-119.