Teacher Responses to Student Mistakes at an Elite Preparatory High School

• In Event: Teachers' Approaches to Shaping Professional Environments

Abstract

Student mistakes and feedback are important for new learning, and teacher-student interactions are a foundational component of daily instruction. Building on existing work on teacher responses to mistakes during instruction from outside of the U.S. (e.g., Santagata, 2005; Schleppenbach, et al., 2007) and at elementary grade levels (e.g., Bray, 2011; DeLiema, 2017), this interview study unpacks teacher experiences with student mistakes in a private elite preparatory high school. Exploring how U.S. teachers support secondary students in an extremely well-resourced environment offers insights into the role school culture plays in teacher responses to mistakes. A thematic analysis revealed three distinctive ways the teachers responded to mistakes within this specific learning context.

Author

• Maleka Donaldson, Smith College