Celebrate mistakes

Making mistakes and learning from mistakes is an intrinsic part of mathematics, but many students see mistakes as a source of embarrassment and shame (Allen & Schnell, 2016).

Research has found that teachers react in a range of ways to student errors. Some may ignore the error or disregard it as an unproductive way of thinking while others appreciate the potential that errors present as effective learning opportunities (Hoth et al., 2022). Creating a classroom environment that not only normalises but welcomes and celebrates mistakes can support students’ positive maths identities and lead to improved learning outcomes.

Key ideas to promote:

> Making mistakes is integral to learning

> Mistakes help us understand our thinking and should be celebrated

> It is safe to make mistakes in this class

 

Reflect

  • How do you respond to student mistakes in the classroom?
  • How do you feel if you make a mathematical error in front of students? What do you typically do or say?
  • How do you feel student errors reflect on the efficacy of your teaching and impact the progress of your lesson?

Try this

In your classroom

  • Anticipate student mistakes to build your own confidence in responding positively
  • Use student mistakes to explore student thinking or as a springboard for inquiry, for example, by discussing 'which wrong answer is more right'
  • Provide opportunities for students to revise their initial thinking following class sharing and discussion
  • Encourage students to predict mistakes that might be made and come up with viable (but incorrect) answers to a problem
  • Share your own learning journey and examples of times where you made mistakes
  • Provide students with tasks that create space to make mistakes
  • Publicly notice and celebrate when students' mistakes lead to new learning

In your school

  • Engage parents and carers to reinforce the value of making mistakes and learning together
  • Share these articles in the school newsletter to support parents and carers to understand maths anxiety and myths about learning mathematics
  • Hold parent and carer workshops to engage families in supporting their children to respond positively to errors; one approach could be to invite families to identify areas of mathematics they wish to learn more about, and to discuss contemporary ways of approaching the topic, as well as common student mistakes or misconceptions