Co-construction of iteration through failure moments: Interactions between museum educators and visitors

When visitors encounter challenges during hands-on engineering activities in museums, educators play a key role in shaping how those moments unfold. In this study, we explored how museum educators and visitors work together during moments of failure and use those experiences to improve designs through iteration. By closely examining video recordings and reflective conversations with five museum educators, we saw how educators and visitors jointly noticed problems, made sense of what went wrong, and decided what to try next. These shared moments helped visitors refine their designs and better understand the engineering process. This study highlights practical ways museum educators can support learning through failure, particularly by helping visitors recognize and reflect on failure as a valuable part of problem-solving rather than something to avoid.