Making mistakes easy aids teacher–student relationship

Though it can feel a little paradoxical, mistakes are an important part of learning. Making an error and coming to understand why you made it can be a crucial step in truly grasping a topic. Despite providing these learning moments, being wrong is often seen as negative, or even punishable, sometimes leading students to fear making mistakes at all.

Previous research has highlighted the importance of a "positive error climate" — an environment in which recognising and building from errors is an important part of the learning process. Positive error climates seem to increase motivation and achievement, while poor ones can lead to feelings of helplessness, anxiety, and the fallout that comes with those negative feelings.

In the British Journal of Educational Psychology, Gabriele Steuer and colleagues look at another little-studied factor: how different kinds of error climates affect students' relationships with their teachers.  

For this study, 751 primary school children based in Switzerland and Luxembourg took part in a longitudinal study between 2015 and 2019. The students, who had the same teachers throughout the study, responded to items at the beginning of term in both 2017 and 2018.

Firstly, the students answered questions about the error climate of their classroom, indicating how much they agreed with statements such as "our teachers are patient when someone makes a mistake in class." They then responded to a measure on their relationship with  their teachers, which included statements such as "my teachers get on my nerves" and "I don't feel taken seriously by my teachers."

Results showed a moderate negative correlation between alienation and error climate; students who, at the first point of the study, felt that their teachers had created a safe space to make mistakes were less likely to report alienation from their teachers at the second point of the study. Conversely, those who felt afraid of making mistakes at early in the study were more likely to feel alienated later on.

With previous studies suggesting that feeling supported and connected to teachers can have positive learning outcomes for students, research seeking to understanding how to improve that dynamic is an important piece of the larger educational puzzle. This investigation adds a new piece of the picture, empirically supporting the long-held idea that fostering a healthy approach to mistake-making is key to maintaining an environment in which children can confidently expand their knowledge.

Other factors could be considered, however, when looking at this dynamic. Students may feel alienated from their teachers a plethora of reasons beyond error climate, including teaching style, peer group dynamics, and more. While the study was longitudinal, future research could cover longer periods of time, as well as looking at different outcomes — for instance, how positive and negative error climates impact how students learn in the long term, how they affect what students achieve, and how or if they change relationships between students.

Overall, though, this study adds weight to the idea that teachers (and parents) should focus on creating space that students feel safe to make mistakes in. Actively teaching that making errors is not only okay, but a genuine learning opportunity, could make a big difference in how comfortable and confident young people feel in the classroom.

Read the paper in full:
Steuer, G., Grecu, A. L., & Morinaj, J. (2024). Error climate and alienation from teachers: A longitudinal analysis in primary school. British Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12659