Mistakes don’t have to be negative experiences – they provide an opportunity for open questioning and dialogue through which teachers can explore misconceptions and misunderstandings without making pupils feel deflated, says Claire Whewell
During a recent lesson observation I watched a student teacher carry out a brainstorm activity with a whole class around forms of renewable energy. On the surface we know that this can be an active and effective pedagogic strategy, and indeed ‘wait time' was used very effectively - not an easy or comfortable thing to do as a teacher, let alone as a new teacher. However, this young teacher already had the answers that he was looking for in his head and so he developed a strategy of scanning the room, taking answers from the learners but only writing up those answers that he perceived as ‘correct'.
Clearly he had decided upon the answers that he was looking for at the planning stage of the lesson and therefore ignored the rest of the suggestions made by pupils. Those answers, in other words, that he considered incorrect. Here was a lost opportunity. A discussion around each and every one of the answers provided would have opened up a fascinating dialogue about our perceptions of forms of renewable energies. Not only would this have allowed the teacher to understand more about the pupils' knowledge levels, but it would also have allowed a shared understanding among the class as a whole as they unpacked and explored the reasons for all of the different answers. Additionally, it would have allowed all of the learners in the class to feel that their input was valued.
Eisner (1996: 6) writes: ‘teaching is the only profession I can think of in which professional socialization begins at age five. As a result, those who teach have had years to internalise a set of expectations regarding what teachers do and what schools are like.'
Unfortunately for us as educators, these often implicit expectations can result in the development of bad practice as well as good. It is all too easy, particularly under the complex range of pressures in the classroom and school, to default to pedagogic practices based on rote learning that are ‘safe' options but which do not always allow learners the space to think and therefore develop thinking and learning at a deeper, meta level. Often this is because we feel, as teachers, the pressure to cover curriculum content for formal examination in a culture of accountability, and this in turn discourages pedagogic creativity in our classrooms. Dewey, in his text entitled How We Think, which was originally published in 1910, puts it nicely when he states (1991: 50)
‘Is this right?' comes to mean ‘will this answer or process satisfy the teacher?' - instead of meaning, ‘Does it satisfy the inherent conditions of the problem?' It would be folly to deny the legitimacy or the value of the study of human nature that children carry on in school; but it is obviously undesirable that their chief intellectual problem should be that of producing an answer approved by the teacher, and their standard of success be successful adaptation to the requirements of another.
In this article I hope to consider the role of mistakes, myths, misconceptions or errors in the pedagogic process. While many of us are comfortable with the notion of ‘wait time' and other assessment for learning strategies in the classroom, we need to think more critically about how we use these approaches and the learning spaces that they create for learners in developing their thinking. We still live in a society where making mistakes is considered a bad thing. In this article I hope to explore how we might use such mistakes, not as a negative experience but as a positive pedagogic tool to be used in the classroom. As teachers it is important to challenge the notion that mistakes should be glossed or passed over without consideration.
Optimal learning
Theory, research and indeed our own experiences as teachers tell us that learners are not passive. They need their learning to be active, exciting and challenging (Carnell and Lodge 2002). As part of this we need to engage more reflectively with how we use mistakes, errors, myths, misconceptions - or whatever you wish to call them - in our teaching. Donaldson (1978: 107) on developing the thinking of Piaget suggested that ‘it is also quite clear that error can play a highly constructive role in the development of thinking. It is now well established that the advent of error can be a sign of progress...'
More recent research (Thurston et al 2010) suggests that there is in fact an optimal level of error correction that promotes attainment in paired reading. Indeed, the error correction process between tutor and tutee was seen as central to the paired reading process being successful. The results of the research built upon the work of Vygotsky, where within the zone of proximal development the authors proposed that there was in fact a zone of optimal development, which, in the case of paired reading, in the age group studied, was roughly one mistake every two minutes.
This rate of error-making provides the best conditions under which learning takes place. Clearly then, errors or ‘mistakes' can be central to learning, indeed they can lead to ‘optimal' learning, if used effectively as part of the learning process. Furthermore, Thurston et al (2010) argue that the role of dialogue between the tutor and tutee is important to the cognitive development of the learners involved, although the balance between the cognitive and the metacognitve is an important feature with the optimum space for talk taking place being once every six minutes.
For many years research has suggested just this, that errors or mistakes in fact aid the metacognitve process. Therefore the role of dialogue in exploring and unpacking errors becomes part of the process of learning here. If we return to the lesson observation from the start of this article, there is an example of this. During the course of the brainstorming activity one pupil put their hand up and suggested ‘wood' as an answer, to which the student teacher wrote up ‘biomass' on the board.
My temptation would have been to stop and open up the discussion here. Why did the pupil give the answer of ‘wood'? Would a follow-up question to this have been useful for the learning during the lesson? Why did the teacher write up ‘biomass'? Would the learners in the class have made the connection? Would there even have been agreement in the class about biomass and renewable energies? This interchange took a matter of seconds and yet the development of further discussion around the answer would have been of great benefit to the class. David Tripp in his discussions of critical incidents in teaching would, I suspect, choose a moment such as this to unpack. In many respects it was simply a passing moment in a geography lesson, and yet, the potential of learning for the class was lost.
In relation to this Donaldson (1978) goes on to note that we need to consider how we allow learners to identify and learn from mistakes without feeling deflated and withdrawing from learning experiences. The research mentioned above (Thurston et al 2010) saw little attainment gain in same-aged peer reading pairs, and there are a number of reasons suggested for this, some of which are to do with trust and self-image in front of peer groups. In our roles as teachers it is important not to allow learners to feel this sense of failure but rather to highlight the value and positive use of making mistakes through our exploration of issues through dialogue, and in particular, open questioning.
Allowing dialogue in a learning environment can sometimes become problematic for us as teachers and this is often because of our implicit baggage, of what we think learning should look like, sound like and feel like. If you have never asked yourself this question about learning it is well worth taking a few moments to think about it.
Gladwell (2009) draws upon the work of American psychologist Wagner who suggests that when we evaluate schooling the emphasis is often on working by yourself; the moment you start to work with others it is often perceived as cheating - who owns the work? Who gets the grade? We know from experience that learners often feel nervous about this, particularly around formally assessed work. And yet, once out in the working environment, the ability to work with others becomes central to our success as work colleagues. So, as adults we need the ability to be creative and critical, to work with others to solve problems, but these are not always skills engendered in formal schooling.
Making risk-taking feel safe
Carnell and Lodge (2002) talk about the need for a learning environment in which risk-taking feels safe. They argue that it is not always up to the teacher to be responsible for the learning that takes place but that they should, as teachers, enable learning to happen in a co-constructivist manner and therefore take responsibility to manage the learning in a way which is shared with the learners themselves. We all learn in the classroom, teachers and pupils alike. Being allowed to make mistakes, and to learn from these is an important part of risk-taking. If, as learners, we cannot make mistakes and learn to take risks we withdraw from the learning process as a social and dialogic process and this can lead to a deepening of misunderstandings and even failure. In other words, the potential for cognitive and meta-cognitive development becomes lost.
This in itself is not insignificant. Gladwell (2009), in considering why people fail, draws upon the work of Steele and Aronson, whose work has resulted in the notion of a ‘stereotype threat'. Put simply, when learners are directly faced with a stereotype about the cultural or socioeconomic group that they belong to and the notions of intelligence attached to such a stereotype, the pressure that this produces results in performance suffering. This is not such a new notion. Remember the 1968 work by Rosenthal and Jacobson entitled Pygmalion in the Classroom, which considered the effects of teacher expectations on student performance. As a learner, feeling that your answers are wrong, or are being ignored could lead to significant issues for the learner around their own identities in the classroom.
So errors, or mistakes, can be central to learning, if allowed. That means the effectiveness of mistakes or errors as a learning process depends upon how a teacher handles mistakes within the learning cycle (Donaldson 1978).
The dangers of rewards
This is where many educationalists have highlighted the danger of using a rewards system with learners simply because of the impact that not gaining a reward can have. Learners are very perceptive - they often know where they stand in terms of attainment in a class, indeed my own research as a PGCE student showed that learners could rank the pupils in a class blindly as accurately as the teacher could using class records. Often a rewards system can simply enhance and externalise this for them. In other words, the ‘right' or ‘correct' answers are rewarded while mistakes are often not. And yet, the deeper learning in a lesson often comes from unpacking and exploring the myths and errors made. For learners these experiences of what is right and what is wrong often become embedded.
I remember learning French at the age of 10 and being reprimanded publically in front of the class for being ‘a fool' because, in a dictation exercise, I had spelt Paris as ‘Paree'. Simply put, the error had occurred because this was how I had heard the city being pronounced in the dictation and therefore I had spelt it phonetically. Now I know that it was an error - but was it such a bad error? After all I did learn from it. I've never forgotten than incident, I've never forgotten the teacher; I can even see the weather outside the window and smell the classroom, the chalkboard, and the wooden desks. So, at the end of the day I learnt from that mistake. Although in this case the received curriculum was not simply about how to spell Paris but also how I felt when made to feel stupid in front of my peers.
Using open questions
Where we see good practice teachers often pick up on mistakes made in class and use open, rather than closed, questioning to explore where misconceptions or misunderstanding might have arisen. This immediate checking, or opening up of a dialogue around the issue, provides the space to explore understanding especially around factual misunderstanding. Using open questions in this situation can often be beneficial and as a young teacher myself I used to remind myself of the open questions to ask through the famous Kipling poem that beings:
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
As these questions are so open they can allow an exploration of issues that need to be unpacked with learners in terms of their understanding of key concepts and issues. What is biomass? Why is wood a biomass? Why might biomass be considered a renewable energy? How do we define renewable energy? This questioning should take place more immediately within the classroom context and the activity being undertaken. What is more, this more open form of questioning would support Bloom's taxonomy in that it promotes deeper exploration, evaluation and criticality rather than simple factual recall. Which we know is essential for learners in terms of more critical and independent thought.
Research is starting to show, though, that it is when a learner reflects and connects at a later stage, maybe in the learning environment, or elsewhere, that cognitive reflection can take place and embed still deeper learning. Sometimes this is simply where a connection can be made to experience and life events, for example, seeing a news item around renewable forms of energy. Once again, the use of debriefing processes, including the errors involved, is a useful strategy here. Pupils can even use the questions above to reflect upon their own learning and to identify next steps. There is little use in getting eight out of 10 and being pleased with a good score if you are unsure about what happened to the other two marks. Those two marks presumably being errors or mistakes, whether these are technically, factually or simply through omission. Learning is not always immediate and can take time to embed.
Finally, it is worth considering that over the longer timescale there is deeper, higher-order thinking that can develop over a time span of lifelong learning. In my early forties I continue to return to the messages about life in novels such as To Kill a Mocking Bird or Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. Often these novels can allow for cross-curricular work that allows learners to explore far more complex misconceptions and myths about life, society and community. These issues often take far longer to explore and unpack as they are tied up so deeply with values, attitudes and beliefs. However, as life experiences take us through a series of ups and downs, successes and failures, they can be an important basis for reflection. We all need to accept that mistakes are part of life's rich tapestry and that we need to accept and learn from them rather than allowing them to become a burden for us to carry.
To end we return to Eisner (1996:6) who completes the quotation at the start of the article by stating that ‘to bring about significant changes in schools requires, among other things, changing the images that teachers hold of their work.' We need to remind ourselves from time to time that teaching is a complex art form. None of us are perfect; we all make ‘mistakes' on different levels. We are human after all. Maybe we simply need to remind ourselves to take more time out to use these as active learning experiences in the classroom to aid deeper cognitive development among our learners, and indeed ourselves. We all make mistakes, a fundamental one being that we do not always see errors as the building blocks of the learning process. Be brave! Next time you pick up on an error or mistake in class think about stopping and taking the time to explore and unpack the reasoning behind the answer. In a safe learning environment where active and deep thinking is encouraged this can only lead to positive outcomes.
Claire Whewell is director of learning and teaching at the Stirling Institute of Education, University of Stirling
Further reading
•Carnell, E and Lodge, C (2002) Supporting Effective Learning, Paul Chapman Publishing: London
•Donaldson, M (1978) Children’s Minds, Fontana Press: London
•Eisner, EW (1996) Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered, Paul Chapman Publishing: London
•Gladwell, M (2009) What the Dog Saw Penguin: London
•Thurston, A, Merrell, C, Tymms, P and Topping, KJ (2010) ‘Implementation Processes and Reading Attainment Outcomes from a Cluster-Randomized Trial of Paired Reading’ paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Gathering, Denver, CO, USA, 30 April-4 May 2010
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