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What Students Want to Hear After Failure
Al Robiullah1, Rebecca Gold1, Kelsey Collins1
1Department of Educational Psychology, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306, USA.
Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland)
|July 28, 2026
Summary
College students prefer instructor affirmation and emotional validation after academic setbacks. Faculty often provide solution-focused advice, missing opportunities to strengthen student-teacher relationships through supportive communication.
Area of Science:
- Educational Psychology
- Higher Education Studies
- Communication in Education
Background:
- Academic setbacks are frequent in college, impacting student motivation and perceptions of faculty support.
- Instructor communication styles following poor performance vary, influencing student outcomes.
- Limited research exists on student preferences for specific instructor responses to academic failure and faculty's awareness of these preferences.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how college students and instructors evaluate different types of instructor responses to academic failure.
- To assess the alignment between students' preferred communication strategies and faculty's perceived or actual communication patterns.
- To identify effective instructor communication for supporting students after academic setbacks.
Main Methods:
- A mixed-methods approach was employed, utilizing vignette scenarios depicting academic failure.
- College students and instructors rated hypothetical instructor comments representing solution-focused, emotional validation, and interpersonal affirmation response types.
- Participants also provided qualitative feedback on desired or typical instructor communication.
Main Results:
- Students rated interpersonal affirmation as the most effective response, followed by emotional validation, and then solution-focused comments.
- Faculty perceived validation and affirmation as more effective than solution-focused responses but tended to generate strategy-focused advice.
- Faculty anticipated students' preference for encouragement but infrequently provided such messages in their own responses.
Conclusions:
- A significant gap exists between faculty's understanding of effective communication and their actual messaging to students experiencing academic difficulty.
- Incorporating brief, affirming, and emotionally responsive messages can enhance student-teacher relationships by conveying care and support.
- Educational institutions should consider training faculty on empathetic and validating communication techniques to better support student resilience.
Keywords:
academic failureemotional validationfaculty responsesfeedbackhigher educationstudent preferencesMore Related Videos
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