When we talk about effective, evidence-based learning strategies, we often note how hard these strategies can feel. This is not a bad thing in itself—challenges can be really good! However, what can be problematic for individual learners is that the difficulty is often misconstrued as “not learning as much,” and can even lead to students liking the strategy less and not choosing it as often (or at all). Students don’t like making lots of mistakes! Framed another way, strategies that feel easy (like rereading) make us think that we are learning a lot, and we tend to like this experience more. If it feels easier and easier, that must be because we are getting better and better, right? Unfortunately, not necessarily.
So, we talk about the difficulty that comes with strategies like retrieval practice, spacing, and interleaving. Perfection does not necessarily mean we’ve mastered the material or learned it well. Embracing errors and challenges can be a positive thing for learning.
In today’s blog post, I want to cover a paper (1) by Deanne Adams and colleagues that demonstrates learning from errors. What I think is neat about this paper is the researchers gave students erroneous math examples (specifically, decimals, which can be hard for middle schoolers) rather than waiting for them to make the errors themselves. The researchers also required the students to identify explanations for the errors (like elaboration through self-explanation) and correct the errors themselves. They compared this learning condition to what appears to be the standard in math: solving practice problems.
