It’s a Mistake Not to Use Mistakes as Part of the Learning
Process
Dr. Richard Curwin
Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of articles that discuss
things like “I don’t know” is ok, and it’s important to learn with the students
while you teach them. In this article, Dr. Richard Curwin discusses the nature
of mistakes, and how they are a lost opportunity in most schools for a number
of reasons. He writes that while looking back on his life, there are four
different kinds of mistakes he has made:
1.
The mistakes he hid
2.
The mistakes he learned nothing from
3.
The mistakes he learned from
4.
The mistakes he learned from, and shared his new
knowledge with others
Dr. Curwin states that because of the nature of schools
teachers and students are almost encouraged to hide their mistakes. People
judge teachers negatively for making mistakes. Teachers are expected to be
perfect right out of college, and parents, administrators, other teachers and
students look down on those of us who make mistakes. The only real, consistent
exception to this is the mentor, mentee relationship. Dr. Curwin believes that all schools would benefit
if a culture of trust was fostered to the point of allowing teachers to admit their
mistakes to colleagues, in order for everyone to learn from them. I can see the
benefit of this, but human nature is going against this kind of plan. People
tend to equate mistakes with shame, and because of this, it is easier for the
majority of teachers to hide their mistakes, rather than share them. If this kind of atmosphere could happen among staff
members, perhaps it could happen in the classroom with students as well.
Mistakes are normal, and everyone makes them. They are not
the problem. The problem with mistakes that students make is that all too
often, they are NOT turned in to learning experiences. Because of this, most
students don’t like to take risks, explore or think for themselves. If teachers
could create a classroom where mistakes were ok, students would cheat less.
Again, I agree with this, but it is something that would be very hard to start
in a high school classroom. By the time they get to me, most students are
conditioned to believe that mistakes are bad, and shameful. Dr. Curwin goes on
to list 9 ways to start to make the change, and even if it is tough to change
conditioned, high school students, I believe it is still worth a try. Some of
the more interesting ones are:
- Stop marking errors on tests and papers without explaining why they're wrong. Give enough explanation to help your student understand what went wrong and how to fix it. A big red X is insufficient. I admit that there are times when I get lazy about this. There are plenty of teachers who are great at feedback and I think this might be the easiest way to start to foster a trust with your students when it comes to making mistakes.
- Give
students a chance to correct their mistakes and redo their work. This
allows mistakes to become learning opportunities. This one lends itself to
learning from mistakes, because it allows the students to find the correct
answers on their own, instead of the teacher telling them they are wrong
and leaving it at that.
- When a
student makes a mistake in a class discussion, don't say things like,
"No, wrong, can anyone help him?" Don't just call on someone
else without further comment. Instead, ask the student, "Why do you
think so? Can you give an example? If you could ask yourself a question
about your answer, what would it be?" I personally try to do this one
as much as possible. I like to foster class discussion and believe it is
extremely important in class discussion. If discussion is going to occur,
the students need to feel comfortable speaking. If I were to shoot down
every off the wall answer I got in class, no one would want to speak at
all.
This article is interesting, and in my experience, in the
classes where trust between teacher and student is reached, the level of
education and learning drastically increases. It makes a lot of sense to try
and foster that trust between staff and administration, and other staff as
well.
I recently saw a video where a teacher gave a 20 question quiz and had a student miss 18 of the 20 questions. She wrote a +2 and put a smilie face on their paper as well as written feedback on every problem that student missed to help them improve. This article reminded me of that because it is too often when we as teachers focus on the problem areas. Students are afraid to not know (or at least admit it openly) because not knowing something gets grade points taken away and grades go down. Building grades up, instead of down, and letting students redo things to learn form their mistakes is at the base of gamification the classroom. This is an article that someone wanting to use gamification in their classroom should read and implement in their classroom. I also agree that this would help build that relationship with the teacher easier when the teacher is helping rather than evaluating.
ReplyDeleteOkay, Tyler, I want to use gamification and I read the article. I think it's okay to provide students the opportunity to earn additional points, but they should not be able to redo work and be at the same level as the student who succeeded initially. Improvement is admirable and a valuable character trait to establish. I do not want students who excel to feel as if their diligence goes unrewarded. That being said, the students who revisit their work in an effort to improve should get consideration for that effort.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with this article both from the student perspective and the teacher. Teachers are expected to be perfect, this is an unreasonable expectation especially for early educators. Education is a practice much like medicine. We are constantly learning new techniques and methods and learning from ones that don't work. If we don't take that risk of failing or being wrong we will never improve what we do.
ReplyDeleteI try hard to foster an environment of learning from mistakes in my math class. Math is so black and white with answers sometimes, but we can talk about the process to get to an answer. I like to encourage interesting wrong answers as a part of everyday class. I think it is however nearly impossible to give good feedback on every assignment without spending half our lives grading. However, I think that allowing a student to rework problems for further credit fosters that continual learning idea.
Bill and I have talked a lot this year about Dan's point that it is nearly impossible to give good feedback on every assignment without spending half of your life grading. I have been working to provide better feedback, but I then get into the problem of taking longer to grade and return things and that takes away from the feedback. Technology can help with this some, but not every assignment can be online. If anyone has a great solution to this problem, I would love to hear it :)
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