My Favorite Failure: Laura McBain & Dr Beghetto - Stanford d.school spotlight

The first feature of the Stanford d.school spotlight has Laura McBain and Dr Ronald Beghetto, authors of My Favorite Failure. They share ideas about consciously engineering learning and experience with uncertainty and surprise as an ingredient.

Perhaps we are too rigorously over-engineering education and human experience to the point of unnatural predictability? Ronald and Laura discuss how they believe there can be good in risks and unplanned experiences, and how we might form healthy and beneficial relationships with failure as a way to build resilience and better inform pedagogy and practice.

Hosted by The Learning Future’s very own Louka Parry, indulge your cortex in some modern thinking at the forefront of educational design with our two amazing guests:

Laura McBain (@laura_mcbain) is a designer, educator and serves as co-managing director of the Stanford d.school and the co-director of the K12 Lab. Her work focuses on how human-centered design can be used to provide equitable and innovative educational experiences that will help all students thrive in a changing world. In this role she leads design challenges in education, designs new learning experiences for educators and serves as an adjunct professor at Stanford University. She is the author of My Favorite Failure: How Setbacks Can Lead to Learning and Growth which provides insights and narratives into how you can create the conditions to take risks and experience failure together. Prior to the d.school, Laura worked for 15 years at High Tech High serving as the Director of External Relations, principal of two school sites and a founding teacher. She has taught middle and high school students in both charter comprehensive schools. Laura has a Bachelors from Miami University-Oxford, Ohio and a Masters from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. 

Dr Beghetto is an internationally recognized expert on creative thought and action in educational settings.  He holds the Pinnacle West Presidential Chair and serves as a Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University.

Dr. Beghetto is the Editor for the