Research School Network: Modelling Mistakes What to consider when modelling errors

When we model, we are often concerned with showing what excellence looks like. However, the path towards excellence is paved with many mistakes. How can we model excellence while modelling mistake-making and mistake-fixing?

How to model mistakes

Grassinger and Dresel (2017) highlight two main responses to errors: an affective-motivational component which relates to persevering despite errors, and an action adaptive reaction, which turns attention to the cognitive processes underlying errors.

Essentially, we should model positive responses to errors and draw attention to strategies to identify and solve the underlying issues behind errors.

A maths teacher might model solving a simultaneous equation. When every example is successful, pupils never see what happens when things are wrong. So they need to see the teacher checking their work and for that sometimes to be incorrect. Then, the teacher can model a positive response to the error (errors happen, this proves my check was worth it, I can learn from this…). As well as this, they can model a specific strategy for checking where the error occurred. This might be going back to the question, checking values, working backwards step by step.

Which mistakes to make?

We don’t want to throw in random errors here and there. We are not merely modelling errors, we’re modelling responses and strategies to fix these errors. And so the errors should be drawn from common errors in the subject. These might be some that have arisen in recent work e.g. the English teacher who is encountering a number of comma splices could intentionally use one, check it and talk through the way to fix it.

We should also consider what we mean by mistakes and errors. You could argue that any time we miss our goals, it is an error. And sometimes we can’t ​‘go back’ and fix them. We have to learn for the next time. Getting the first few bars of our recorder solo is something we can only fix next time.

When to make mistakes?

We should only start introducing errors when pupils have reached a certain level of proficiency. We want to model success and allow for practice. Bob Pritchard, in this article for the EEF writes:

The FAME model is an approach for using worked examples. FAME stands for Fading, Alternation, Mistakes and Explanation.

Grassinger, R. & Dresel, M. (2017). Who learns from errors on a class test? Antecedents and profiles of adaptive reactions to errors in a failure situation.