contributed by Dr. Zach Cohen
In 2009 President Obama speaks to a group of students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia.
As someone who has readily and shamelessly admitted his mistakes as a youth and how those missteps have informed the adult he has become, he humbly but poignantly impressed upon the audience the importance of learning from one’s mistakes. “You can’t let your failures define you—you have to let them teach you” (Obama, 2009). Anyone listening to this speech will invariably nod in agreement with President Obama’s rhetoric.
These knowing nods, however, obscure the long, complex relationship between making mistakes and education in the United States.
Stemming from research conducted in the 1920s, errors are largely seen as problems to be eradicated in our classrooms. In 1922 the associationist theory of mathematics began to cultivate the belief that errors resulted from a lack of practice and mastery of number facts (Thorndike & Woodyard, 1922).
What the research says about learning from mistakes
These findings were further cemented in the collective psyche of American educators in the 1960s when Terrace (1966) showed that “pigeons can be taught to distinctively peck a red circle rather than a green circle by being reinforced way that they never peck the green circle, ie. the pigeons performed in an unmistakable manner” (Terrace, 2001, p. 9). This discovery, whether correctly interpreted or not, is pushing education toward an error-free model of teaching—the thinking is that if a bird can learn to correct mistakes, so can a child.
Later in the decade, Ausubel (1968) codified this emerging interpretation, warning of the dangers that errors posed to the learning process, suggesting that “allowing (students) to make errors encourages them to practice incorrect and ineffective approaches that will create problems because they are difficult to rewrite later with correct approaches” (Ausubel, 1968, p. 25). There is some logic to this idea that making mistakes will strengthen and reinforce the neural pathways responsible for this faulty thinking; however, current research has concluded just the opposite.
See also Ways to help students learn from their mistakes
The importance of learning from mistakes is reflected widely in literature and around the world. Studies from the Philippines, Germany, and Hong Kong have concluded that there is a strong connection between making mistakes and learning, with one study from the United States of America even claiming that “an undue reluctance to engage in mistakes has hindered American education” (DeBrincat, 2015 ; Metcalfe, 2017; Quieng et al., 2015; Song, 2018).
Modern research claims that “. . . making mistakes can greatly facilitate new learning. . . improve the generation of correct responses, facilitate active learning (and) stimulate the learner to direct attention appropriately. . .” (Metcalf, 2017, p. 472). Indeed, although perhaps counterintuitive, Richland et al. (2009) found that error generation was positively related to improved memory.
Errors occur at the edge of knowledge and experience; therefore, mistakes should be accepted not only as a by-product of learning. Mistakes are not merely instructive; they are the key that offers honest insight into the unique nature of a multifaceted mechanism like learning (Lewis, 2017). In fact, people are already predisposed to learn from their mistakes.
The neuroscience of making mistakes
When a person makes an error, subsequent actions are delayed by a phenomenon known as post-error lag (PES). PES refers to individuals’ tendency to delay the current trial after making an error on a previous trial (Rabbitt & Rodgers, 1977). Rabbitt and Rogers (1977) found that when engaged in an activity that had been performed incorrectly, previously sequential actions were delayed, allowing participants time to take corrective action.
2018 survey of Caltech researchers found that mistakes set off an almost instantaneous chain reaction of productive brain activity. The researchers found that before a person is even aware of their mistake, a set of neurons—called “error neurons”—start firing (Fu et al., 2019). In rapid succession, “the brain of a person who makes a mistake lights up with the kind of activity that encodes the information more deeply,” helping to ensure that the same mistake is not made on a subsequent attempt (Fu et al., 2019, p . 172).
Another interesting and related brain process induced by making mistakes concerns the release of dopamine. Dopamine is released when students answer questions correctly – and are aware of their correctness, through external or internal monitoring mechanisms. Conversely, when errors occur, dopamine levels decrease, but this decrease in dopamine triggers another response, which is that the brain seeks corrective feedback and adapts new information to prevent future dopamine drops by “essentially changing incorrect neural networks and increasing the probability of a correct answer next time” (McMillan, 2017, p. 91).
Despite the many ways in which the human body and brain strive to learn from mistakes, “human beings, who are almost unique in their ability to learn from their mistakes . . . are also remarkable for their apparent reluctance to do so” (Whitman, 2016, p. 81). This is due to the socio-cultural dimension that prevents these adaptive responses from being adopted and operationalized.
Making mistakes and emotion
People have been socialized and in turn have come to perceive mistakes as something to be avoided (Fischer et al., 2006). It is also quite common to be afraid of making mistakes. “Teachers grade us lower for failing tests, bosses often punish us (and worse) for taking risks, and religions can condemn us if we commit a sin or take the wrong path” (Tugend & London, 2011, page 180). People’s aversion to making mistakes is evidenced by the fact that people generally prefer less optimal learning outcomes as long as it allows them to avoid making a mistake.
Huelser (2014) sought to make research participants aware of the “utility of learning by making mistakes” but found that even when “participants’ attention was focused on the increased retention resulting from the use of research techniques that required generating of mistakes, participants’ underconfidence in their ability to learn from their mistakes persisted (Huelser, 2014, p. 27).
Related to this 2017 study. found that even when study participants’ attention was focused on the benefits of error generation in retrieving information from memory, study participants continued to prioritize less efficient study strategies that did not involve making errors (Yang et al ., 2017 ). This unfavorable response to making mistakes seems to suggest that people would prefer not to dip their toes into the murky waters of effortful learning, even if generating mistakes actually improves learning outcomes.
2019 survey sought to understand why by explaining medical students’ feelings about errors. The study found that medical students reported strong emotional reactions when they were asked to simply visualize making mistakes. These medical students used words such as “scared,” “guilty,” “embarrassed,” “scared,” and “scary” to describe the visualization exercise (Fischer et al., 2006, p. 420). The suffering these students expressed is not unique to them.
In fact, the fear of making mistakes is common enough to warrant its own diagnosis in medical nomenclature: atychiphobia. Even if that fear is a formless ghost, it is still very real. The fear of failure is deeply rooted. Researchers know that when students with math anxiety encounter numbers, for example, “the fear center in the brain is activated—the same fear center that lights up when people see snakes or spiders” (Boaler, 2019, p. 122). The problem is that this fear not only stops students in the present, but prevents them from actively realizing their future.
Error-literacy in the classroom
To be prepared to navigate the uncharted future, students will need to possess the willingness to make mistakes and the ability to learn from them (Scharmer, 2016). A learning process immersed in making mistakes almost models “the messy, exciting, frustrating process in which discoveries are made and innovations emerge” (Eggleton & Moldavan, 2001, p. 43). Whether it’s transitioning to a new career or getting used to the breakneck speed of technological advancement, the question is not whether mistakes will be made, but whether mistakes can serve as learning tools.
So how can we, as educators, create the conditions for our students to develop the tools they need to reliably turn their mistakes into lessons? Well, that’s where Mistake Literacy comes in.
Schools are complex, human-centered organizations that are influenced by multiple factors, including environmental, personal, and behavioral elements that shape learning. While many people inherently understand the value of learning from mistakes, the environment and expectations of the educational environment often encourage the opposite approach, discouraging their recognition and exploration.
However, research shows that there are actionable strategies in the classroom that can mitigate these adverse effects by fostering an environment where mistakes are not feared but viewed as opportunities for growth. This is where Misliteracy comes into play.
Mistake Literacy offers a framework that empowers teachers and students to accept mistakes as a critical part of the learning process. By implementing the strategies and attitudes outlined in Error Literacy, educators can create optimal conditions for students to recognize, respond to, and correct their errors.
Mistake Literacy aims to demystify the process of learning from mistakes by making it clear and accessible. This approach not only promotes a healthier attitude toward learning, but also lays the foundation for future educational endeavors. Through Mistake Literacy, the path to learning is intertwined with the acceptance and exploration of one’s mistakes, turning mistakes into mastery.
