Introduction
Compiled from a series of semi-structured interviews conducted in 2020 with tenured, pre-tenure, contingent faculty and postdoctoral fellows across the University of Toronto Mississauga, this “wish list” captures a snapshot of pedagogical techniques and changes desired by these instructors to facilitate equitable teaching, research, and policy around failure in higher education.
Of course, elements differentiated by category here often overlap. In particular, pedagogical techniques and institutional policies are both inflected by and interact with broader cultural conceptions of failure. At both micro and macro levels (course design and larger institutional policies, e.g.), we can bolster, resist, or take steps to rewrite dominant cultural narratives around failure and education).
It is not the case that the suggestions in these lists will be feasible for, applicable to or appropriate to any given context. We encourage individual readers to engage with the data presented here as works best for them and the specific student contexts to which their work responds.