Reflections on failure: teaching research methodology

Across our combined 15 years of experience as methodologists and research methodology instructors, we have found that the concept of 'failure' is only a small portion of methodological literature and is similarly missing from scholarship on teaching and learning social science research methodology. We define failure in terms of our inability as researchers to reach the onto-epistemological ideals to which we aspire in our empirical fieldwork with others, both in terms of relationships formed with our research participants and our inability to overcome broader (institutional or socio-political) constraints. This reflexive position paper is an attempt to provide several tools that instructors of research methodology courses may use to teach students techniques for better understanding the causes of failure; to provide students opportunities for workshopping and discussing fieldwork in the moment; and to model transparency and openness in reporting failures as part of their writing and research dissemination. We draw on our own teaching experiences to provide examples of how to build structures that will support students as they prepare to deal with the failures that often occur in empirical inquiry. We then offer examples of what teaching about failure might look like within the frameworks of existing research methodology courses.