What is a Literacy Error? Research on Learning Through Failure – TeachThought

given by Dr. Zak Cohen

In 2009, President Obama spoke to a group of students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia.

As someone who frankly admitted his mistakes when he was young and how these missteps inform the adult he is, he humbly but firmly emphasized to his 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 who listened to this speech was nodding their head to President Obama’s speech.

However, this nod to knowledge hides a long, complicated relationship between wrongdoing and education in the United States.

Since research conducted in the 1920s, errors have become increasingly recognized as problems to be eliminated in our classrooms. In 1922, the associationist theory of mathematics began to develop the belief that errors are caused by a lack of effort and handling of numerical facts (Thorndike & Woodyard, 1922).

What Research Says About Learning From Mistakes

This finding was further emphasized in the psychology of American teachers in the 1960s when Terrace (1966) showed that “pigeons could be taught to pick a red circle by discriminating against a green circle by being reinforced in such a way that they never peck.” the green circle, i.e., the pigeons are made flawlessly” (Terrace, 2001, p. 9). This discovery, whether interpreted correctly or not, pushed education toward error-free teaching—the idea that if a bird can learn to eliminate mistakes, so can a child.

Later in the decade, Ausubel (1968) added to this emerging definition by warning of the dangers of errors in the learning process, suggesting that “allowing [students] making mistakes encourages them to use incorrect and inefficient methods that will cause problems because it is difficult to write them down over time in the correct ways” (Ausubel, 1968, p. 25). To some extent, it makes sense in this view that making mistakes will strengthen and entrench the emotional pathways that cause these faulty thinking; however, the current study has concluded the opposite.

Look again Ways to Help Students Learn from Their Mistakes

The importance of learning from mistakes is widely echoed in literature and around the world. Studies conducted in the Philippines, Germany, and Hong Kong conclude that there is a strong correlation between making mistakes and learning, while another study conducted in the United States of America even argues that “the unnecessary reluctance to make mistakes has held back American education” (DeBrincat, 2015; Metcalfe, 2017; Quieng et al., 2015; Song, 2018).

Modern research argues that “. . . making mistakes can be very helpful in learning new things. . . improve the production of appropriate responses, facilitate active learning, [and] encourage the student to direct attention in the right way. . .” (Metcalfe, 2017, p. 472). In fact, although perhaps counterintuitive, Richland et al. (2009) found that the production of errors was positively correlated with improved memory.

Errors occur at the edges of knowledge and information; therefore, mistakes should be accepted and not just as a result of learning. Mistakes are not only educational; they are a keyhole that provides a reliable view of the unique nature of a protean approach like learning (Lewis, 2017). In fact, people already tend to learn from their mistakes.

The Neuroscience of Error Making

When a person makes a mistake, the next action is delayed, a phenomenon known as post-error slowing (PES). PES refers to the tendency of individuals to slow down on the current trial after making an error on the previous trial (Rabbitt & Rodgers, 1977). Rabbitt and Rodgers (1977) found that when they perform an error-prone task before subsequent actions are delayed, allowing participants time to perform a corrective action.

A 2018 study by researchers at the California Institute of Technology found that mistakes cause an almost immediate response to productive brain activity. Researchers found that before a person becomes aware of their mistake, one set of neurons—called “error neurons”—starts to fire (Fu et al., 2019). In quick succession, “the brain of the person making the mistake lights up with a type of activity that includes information in depth,” which helps ensure that the same mistake is not made in the next attempt (Fu et al., 2019, p. 172).

Another interesting and related brain process involved in making a mistake concerns the release of dopamine. Dopamine is released when students answer questions correctly—and know their accuracy, both through external and internal monitoring processes. On the other hand, when mistakes occur, dopamine levels decrease, but this decrease in dopamine causes another response, that is the brain seeks a corrective response and the supply of new information to prevent a decrease in dopamine in the future, “which basically changes the neural networks that are negative and increases opportunities to make the right response in the future” (McMillan, 2017, p. 91).

Despite the many ways in which the human body and mind try to learn from mistakes, “people, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from their mistakes . . . they are also notable for their apparent reluctance to do so” (Whitman, 2016, p. 81). This is due to the socio-cultural dimensions that influence these dynamic responses to adoption and implementation.

Mistakes and Emotions

People have socialized and, in turn, internalized mistakes as something to avoid (Fischer et al., 2006). It is also common to be afraid of making mistakes. “Teachers let us down for failing tests, administrators often blame us (and worse) for taking risks, and religions can condemn us if we commit a sin or take the wrong path” (Tugend & London, 2011, p. 180). People’s aversion to making mistakes is evidenced by the fact that people, in general, prefer negative learning outcomes as long as it allows them to avoid making mistakes.

Huelser (2014) attempted to inform research participants of the “help of learning by making mistakes,” but found that even when participants were ‘drawn to improved retention resulting from using research techniques that required the production of errors, participants’ lacked confidence. in their ability to learn from their persistent mistakes (Huelser, 2014, p. 27).

Relatedly, a 2017 study found that even when study participants’ attention was drawn to the benefits of error production in recalling information from memory, study participants continued to prioritize ineffective study strategies that did not involve error making (Yang et al., 2017). This negative response to error seems to suggest that people would prefer not to dip their toes in the murky waters of effortful learning, even if the production of errors actually improves learning outcomes.

A 2019 study sought to understand why by describing medical students’ feelings about mistakes. Research has found that medical students report stronger emotional reactions when asked to imagine making mistakes. These medical students used words such as ‘fear,’ ‘guilt,’ ‘shame,’ ‘dread,’ and ‘horror’ to describe the visualization task (Fischer et al., 2006, p. 420). The stress mentioned by these students is not limited to them.

In fact, the fear of mistakes is pervasive enough to warrant its own diagnosis in medical nomenclature: atychiphobia. Even if this fear is a vague idea, it is still very real. The fear of failure is deep. 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 holds students back in the present but prevents them from achieving their future.

Mistake-Reading and Writing in the Classroom

In order for students to be ready to navigate an uncertain future, students will need to have the willingness to make mistakes and the ability to learn from them (Scharmer, 2016). A learning process immersed in making mistakes is almost always modeled as a “messy, exciting, frustrating process in which discovery and innovation occur” (Eggleton & Moldavan, 2001, p. 43). Whether transitioning to a new job or adapting to the rapid pace of technological advancement, the issue is not whether mistakes will be made, but whether mistakes can serve as tools to enable learning.

So, how can we, as teachers, create the conditions for our students to build the toolkit they need to turn their mistakes into lessons? This is where Mistake Literacy comes in.

Schools are complex, human-centered organizations influenced by a multitude of factors including environmental, personal, and behavioral factors that shape learning. Although many people naturally understand the importance of learning from mistakes, the environment and expectations in educational settings often encourage the opposite approach, discouraging their willingness and experimentation.

Research shows, however, that there are strategies that can be implemented within the classroom that can reduce these negative effects, fostering an environment where mistakes are not feared but seen as opportunities for growth. This is where Mistake Literacy comes into play.

Mistake Literacy provides a framework that empowers teachers and students to accept mistakes as an important part of the learning process. Using the strategies and ideas presented in Mistake Literacy, teachers can create the right conditions for students to recognize, respond to, and correct their mistakes.

Mistake Literacy aims to demystify the process of learning from mistakes, making it clear and accessible. This teaching method not only promotes a healthy attitude towards learning but also lays the foundation for future educational endeavors. Through Learning by Mistakes, the learning process combines accepting and evaluating one’s mistakes, turning mistakes into mastery.