How do mistakes make us learn better

Committing a mistake is a development tool

The inevitable part of making the learning journey successful is by committing mistakes.

Students often give wrong answers to questions in front of the whole class.

Sometimes students feel very ashamed of this act, but it implies that they are putting effort to learn the topic.

Cognitive research has made an important revelation about the impact of mistakes on learning.

The correction method after committing the mistake is a powerful tool to absorb the whole topic in a better way.

So, committing a mistake is an indispensable part of learning.

American point of view on making mistakes

Traditional educators of the US do not allow students to struggle with the errors because they perceived making mistakes would expand the risk of a wrong understanding of the topic.

Janet Metcalfe, a professor of psychology at Columbia University, published an article named “learning from errors" to explain that making mistakes establishes the wrong concept permanently.

Why are mistakes significant?

American educators, Classic studies by psychologists James Stigler of UCLA and the late Harold Stevenson, stated in their 1994 book The Learning Gap, compared videotaped lessons in eighth-grade math in several countries.

They found that American teachers humiliated students who would give wrong answers and praised correct answers.

But Japanese teachers influenced the students to find out the mistakes they are making. The mistake finding process used to make their brain more active.

They began to analyze things with powerful logic.

In such a way, the thought process got developed.

Japanese teacher made an outstanding effort to make the whole learning process exciting and student engaging. Students did not fear giving wrong answers.

The practical guidance of Japanese teachers enhanced student, s thinking and logical power mostly.

As a result of this powerful learning method, Japanese students outshine American students in the mathematic exam.

The positive impact of mistakes

Slowly the new researchers of America have started to understand the positive side of committing the mistake.

Nate Kornel of Williams college examined the fact of mistakes’ influence in learning by giving students a word.

Students were asked to relate that word with another relevant word.

It was significantly observed that students used to remember the relevant word correctly if they made a wrong guess.

Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck researched education and psychology with her book named Mindset stating two distinct mindsets.

The observation that one’s intelligence level is constant, and another observation can grow with efforts.

It is fluid and can grow with effort, fixed mindset people stop putting effort if they fail at something, but growth mindset people tend to learn from the mistake by working harder.

Growth mindset, people, get more involved in the problem if they are not getting the solution.

Learning about mistakes makes the person closer to find the solution rather than getting stuck and stop working on the problem.

Metcalfe has felt that making mistakes is an essential tool to improve the person's performance level in his academic or professional field.

A math teacher named Alcala used to publish result without giving any number or grade.

She was more inclined to make students realize where the problem lay for poor performance rather than scolding students and humiliating students in front of the whole class.

We hope this article guides you to realize that mistakes will improve learning.

This article discussed the advantages of making errors through some famous scientific research stories.