One of the most important reasons for changing learner attitudes to mistakes is that we need these mistakes out in the open if we are going to teach away from them.
If the mistakes learners make don’t come out, it’s more likely they’ll keep making them in the future.
This may result in the impact of the mistakes being compounded.
As an example, imagine a learner who is labouring under a misconception over what alliteration means.
If the teacher can get this mistake into the open early on, then they can teach away from it.
This helps the learner to better understand alliteration and moves them away from their mistaken way of thinking.
It also shows them the benefit of making mistakes and learning from these.
However, let us imagine that the mistake does not get out into the open, meaning the teacher cannot teach away from it.
Further down the line, the learner makes use of the concept in an extended piece of writing.
Perhaps in response to an exam question.
Here, the impact of the misconception is compounded.
Everything the learner writes about alliteration rests on a faulty understanding of the term.
This vignette illustrates why eliciting misconceptions is in the best interests of the teacher and the learner, whereas keeping them locked away is, ultimately, to no one’s benefit.
A couple of points follow.
First, when trying to change learner perceptions of mistakes, talk them through this process, either individually or as a whole class.
Explain why you want to know about their mistakes, why you want them out in the open, and why this is a good thing for everyone.
Use examples such as the one above to illustrate what this means in practice.
You might also like to call on your prior experience to offer further examples.
Second, when you are planning, teaching, and assessing, you can do so with the explicit aim of eliciting and teaching away from mistakes.
This might lead you to plan assessments, for example, that are more focussed on misconceptions and recurring areas of uncertainty, than on anything else.
Or it might cause you to circulate more often during whole-class activities, and to do so with the aim of identifying mistakes from which you can teach away.
Hinge Questioning
This type of questioning focuses on the most important misconceptions learners might make in a given topic.
Whereas diagnostic questioning is generally broad, requires little planning, and can be applied in any situation, hinge questioning is specific, needs to be developed in advance, and is usually only relevant to one situation.
It works as follows:
The teacher identifies the key piece of information on which learning hinges.
For example, in a lesson on photosynthesis, the key piece of information would be what photosynthesis is.
If learners have a sound understanding of this, they can move on securely.
If they don’t, they will move on with knowledge that is insecure or misconceived.
This, therefore, is the key point on which learning hinges.
Having identified the hinge point, the teacher then constructs a question designed to test learner understanding and to draw out common misconceptions.
Here is an example hinge question for our imaginary lesson:
What is photosynthesis?
- The process by which plants convert sunlight into food.
- The way in which plants get their food.
- The process by which plants convert light energy into chemical energy.
- The way plants turn carbon dioxide into food and oxygen.
(C)is the correct answer.
However, the other answers may all seem plausible to learners.
And that is the point.
Contained in the incorrect answers are common misconceptions that we expect some learners to make.
The point of the hinge question is to draw these out, so that we can teach away from them.
Compare the above example to some diagnostic questioning around photosynthesis:
- What can you tell me about photosynthesis?
- How would you define photosynthesis?
- What makes photosynthesis important?
- Is photosynthesis about making food? Why?
These are good questions, but they do not get to the heart of the matter as swiftly and precisely as the hinge question does.
In addition, you can pose the hinge question to the whole class, making it easy to quickly identify those learners who need further support and those who are ready to move on.
(Although, some probing questioning might be necessary to find out why learners have chosen the answers they’ve gone for.)
In summary, eliciting misconceptions and teaching away from these is always a good part of any teacher’s practice.
A combination of diagnostic and hinge questioning will help you to do this effectively.
Making the elicitation of misconceptions a central feature of your teaching helps normalise the idea of mistake-making in learner minds, thus changing their attitude to mistakes and helping them to develop growth mindset habits.
