Psychology in the Classroom

In this final summary interview with Prof. Dr. Suzanne Narciss, we review all our learning about failure over the last few months. There is much we can do to encourage our students to learn from errors, including interactive formative assessment and feedback strategies, prompting reflection and adaptive strategies for dealing with errors and using other people’s errors. As teachers we need to help students overcome their fear of failure by creating a positive error climate and supporting students to develop a more positive error mindset. But this is an area that is challenging to research and we still have much to learn. 

More than one in 10 children ‘almost always’ or ‘often’ fear failure. But where do they learn this from?

This fear can often pass from parents to children. Parental communication about failures and setbacks plays a critical role in shaping a child's perception of mistakes. In her research Dr Elizabeth Peterson found that:

• Clear action plans without discussion of collaborative resources increased children's fear of making mistakes. 

• When mothers acknowledged their child's emotions and discussed collaborative problem-solving, there was a notable decrease in the child's fear of mistakes.

• Many mothers minimally acknowledged or dismissed their child's emotions (40%), rarely discussed action plans (55%), or collaborative resources (79%).

Effective parental communication involving emotional acknowledgment and collaborative problem-solving can help reduce children's fear of making mistakes. In this interview we discuss the consequences of this research for the classroom and how we as teachers can have positive conversations with our students about failure.

You can find Elizabeth’s paper here:

Peterson, E. R., Sharma, T., Bird, A., Henderson, A. M. E., Ramgopal, V., Reese, E., & Morton, S. M. B. (2024). How mothers talk to their children about failure, mistakes and setbacks is related to their children's fear of failure. British Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12685

https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjep.12685

Today's discussion focuses on our perceptions, as teachers, of failure. When as a teacher we watch our lessons back on film where do we see failure and how do we respond? Reflecting on our own relationship with failure could be important in informing our practice in the classroom. For example our personal relationship with failure will inform how we respond to student failure and this in turn could hinder or facilitate student growth and learning. In this episode Dr Amber Simpson and Dr Alice Anderson discuss their paper 'Identifying and shifting educators' failure pedagogical mindsets through reflective practices'.

The details and link to the paper is here:

Simpson A, Anderson A, Goeke M, Caruana D, Maltese AV. Identifying and shifting educators' failure pedagogical mindsets through reflective practices. Br J Educ Psychol. 2023 Dec 23. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12658. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38140824. 

Informalscience.org

Failure in Making: https://sites.google.com/binghamton.edu/failureinmaking/home?pli=1

How students and teachers navigate and prioritise different learning processes after encountering impasses during learning can be complex. Recognising that failure moments can be multifaceted, today’s episode explores how classroom discourse reveals varied valued learning processes, such as problem-solving, preventing future issues, and developing troubleshooting skills. The research being discussed identifies five valued learning processes in debugging: resolving the immediate issue, preventing future bugs, developing skills for novel problems, engaging with authority, and calibrating self and collective efficacy. It explores the tensions between pursuing different learning outcomes and how these decisions are negotiated between teachers and students. It also addresses the classroom culture, including fostering growth mindsets and addressing racial inequities in learning environments.

DeLiema D, Hufnagle A, Ovies-Bocanegra M. Contrasting stances at the crossroads of debugging learning opportunities. Br J Educ Psychol. 2024 Feb 16. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12666. 

How errors are handled in the classroom is an important aspect of teaching and has a variety of consequences for students' own dealing with errors, their learning and their performance. In classrooms with a negative error climate, students are more likely to experience fear of making mistakes and feel alienated from their teachers. Teachers' unsupportive behaviours, such as negative reactions to errors, may increase students' alienation. Unsupportive teacher behaviours may also indirectly contribute to the development of fear of failure by influencing students' self-beliefs and motivation to do well in school. Positive and supportive student–teacher relationships have been shown to alleviate school alienation, suggesting that student–teacher interactions have a strong impact on academic as well as social learning experiences. In this episode we will learn how to ensure we create a positive error climate where students feel safe and that reduces the chances of alienation.

Steuer G, Grecu AL, Mori J. Error climate and alienation from teachers: A longitudinal analysis in primary school. Br J Educ Psychol. 2024 Jan 2. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12659. 

https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjep.12659

If you would like to learn more about alienation please do take a listen to my podcast with Dr Ben Looker (20th June 2022) about student-teacher relationships.

In order to learn from errors it is important that pupils regulate their emotions. The emotions that they feel when they make an error is underpinned by their Error Learning Orientation - whether they see errors as positive and an opportunity to learn or as a negative thing that brings shame. In this interview Rahel Schmid discusses her paper about emotions pupils feel when they make errors and how this may be linked to error learning orientation. This episode includes lots of great tips to help teachers develop a positive error learning orientation in their pupils.

Schmid R, Smit R, Robin N, Strahl A. The role of momentary emotions in promoting error learning orientation among lower secondary school students: An intervention study embedded in a short visual programming course. Br J Educ Psychol. 2024 Mar 19. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12681. Available : https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjep.12681

This week find out how you can encourage students to persist with learning and engage with metacognitive strategies when they make mistakes.  Dr Maria Tulis talks about her experiments that aimed to find a causal link between beliefs about errors, how these beliefs maintain motivation and how students then adapt their actions to effectively analyse and correct errors. In study two during learning students were given encouragement to persist and prompts about what action to take immediately after they had made the error. Might this increase persistence, metacognitive control and effort? What are the implications for our classrooms? 

Paper and link:

Tulis M, Dresel M. Effects on and consequences of responses to errors: Results from two experimental studies. Br J Educ Psychol. 2024 May 8. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12686

https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjep.12686

This is the 3rd episode in the failure series of podcasts this term. We are staying with the theme of feedback to errors this week. Professor Janet Metcalfe discusses her paper on learning from errors and in particular how one teacher uses an interactive approach, encouraging students to work out why they made an error rather than simply correcting them, and the impact it had on the students’ learning. But as always there is discussion plenty of wide ranging discussion on this topic.

If you wish to access the paper here is the link:

Metcalfe J, Xu J, Vuorre M, Siegler R, Wiliam D, Bjork RA. Learning from errors versus explicit instruction in preparation for a test that counts. Br J Educ Psychol. 2024 Jan 11. doi: 10.1111/bjep.12651. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38212139.

When students receive error feedback it usually causes a negative emotional response, this in turn can impact learning.  If we could somehow elicit a positive emotional response to error feedback, research suggests that this will increase motivation, enhance the desire to continue on a learning task and promote the use of efficient metacognitive strategies.  In today’s podcast with Dr Annalisa Soncini we discuss how using a simple smiley in written error feedback can nuance the feedback so that the emotional reaction is more positive and the surprising impact this has on a student’s learning experience. 

Annalisa’s paper ‘Supportive error feedback fosters students' adaptive reactions towards errors: Evidence from a targeted online intervention with Italian middle school students’ is open source and can be found on this link: https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjep.12679

You can find out more about Hattie’s Visible Learning here: https://visible-learning.org/

Failure - a word that is taboo in education and yet is part and parcel of the learning experience. As teachers, dealing with errors in the classroom can fundamentally change so much of the learning experience. The beliefs teachers and students hold about failure and errors changes behaviour and can cause students to persist and grow or to avoid risk and challenge. This term Psychology in the Classroom will be exploring Failure with the help of researchers and the British Journal of Educational Psychology(BJEP). This first episode introduces several key concepts with the editors of the BJEP Special Issue on failure: Gabriele Steuer, Elizabeth Peterson and Maria Tulis