Teachers' Responses to Mistakes and Misunderstandings in the Kindergarten Classroom

• In Event: 54.018 - Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Kindergarten teachers work to help students learn myriad new information and skills. Although making mistakes and receiving corrective feedback are assets to memory and retention (Huesler & Metcalfe, 2012), around age 5-6 children begin to develop a fear of failure that can constrain their choices during learning (McClelland, 1958; Conroy, Coatsworth, & Kaye, 2007). Student-teacher relationships exert a strong influence on students’ academic and social learning experiences (Pianta, Hamre, & Stuhlman, 2003), however, there is much still to be discovered about the features of mistake-related, interpersonal interactions in Kindergarten classrooms. The purpose of this dissertation study is to more deeply explore and articulate the nuance of how Kindergarten teachers respond to mistakes in real-world, classroom contexts.

Chapter 1 is a thematic analysis (Charmaz, 2006) of Kindergarten teacher interviews (n=25), focused on identifying common, mistake-related attitudes, responses, and experiences from their classroom teaching. Through incident-by-incident, emergent coding of interview transcripts, analytic memo writing and iterative data review, I identified five central themes in the teacher’s descriptions of mistakes and learning in their classrooms:

Theme 1: Students require differentiated responses to mistakes, which are determined based on who the child is and context of the mistake. This means that teachers set individualized goals for students, and consider their personal characteristics –like personality, sensitivity level, and ability– when crafting responses to mistakes.

Theme 2: It is important to build a positive, community focused classroom culture in which children feel safe and encouraged to make mistakes. Teachers do this by attending to mistake talk, conveying clear yet flexible expectations, modeling their own mistakes, and supporting positive peer interactions.

Theme 3: Teachers extend support so that students are able to self-correct their own mistakes. To promote this, teachers ask probing questions and/or provide tools and strategies to students.

Theme 4: There are some common, concrete instructional strategies that are undertaken to address mistakes when they happen. These frequently included critical self-evaluation of the teaching and subsequent adjustment of instruction, pulling individual students to discuss or practice one-on-one, repeating the directions, and taking a break from the work.

Theme 5: In addition to teachers and students, other people from outside of the classroom can have an important influence on responses to mistakes in the classroom. This primarily takes the form of achievement pressures (i.e., benchmarks, assessments, curriculum) and supports (i.e., additional practice at home, volunteers in the classroom) that derive from the school district/administration, children’s home/family lives, and fellow colleagues at the school.

Chapters 2 and 3 are portraits (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) of responses to mistakes for two teachers and their respective classroom communities. The first portrait is an account of a teacher’s responses to mistakes in a diverse, urban public school. In the face of constrained resources of time, materials, and support, along with heavy pressure to meet benchmarks and complete a litany of standardized assessments, Mr. Allen works to help students improve in their work, including basic alphabet identification, writing, drawing, and math skills. He frequently tells kids “kiss your brain” when they are correct, helps them to help themselves when they make mistakes, and expects them to do their “best best job” – holding them accountable to their own prior performance. Depending on the circumstance, he sometimes pushes kids to focus squarely on the facts, while in other situations he is open and willing to entertain any of their guesses. Within a context heavily focused on benchmarks and achievement, he tries to help students to correct their mistakes and gain the independence needed for them to be successful in 1st grade.

The second portrait focuses on a teacher working in a well-resourced, suburban public school. Mrs. Tucker’s classroom is a space in which students are provided ample, daily opportunities for practice and teacher feedback. She works to make Kindergarten a flexible, “gray area” in which students can try new things out, self-correct, and drive their own learning. At the same time, she frequently pushes them toward improved and correct performance, and differentiates expectations depending on student capabilities. She frequently features mistakes during classroom activities, whether it is asking students to correct mistakes as part of skills practice, or by excitedly discussing a “fantastic oops” made by a student publically.

These three chapters offer in-depth elaborations of how real-world teachers respond to mistakes during instruction. The work is both a foundation for further research on mistakes and learning, and a resource for practitioners, school leaders, and policymakers.

Author

• Maleka Donaldson, University of Hartford