Learning from Errors: Effects of a teacher training on students‘ attitudes towards and their individual use of errors

A constructive handling with errors is considered as an important factor for learning processes. Accordingly, instruction should enable learners to develop positive attitudes towards error situations and to use errors as learning opportunities. In a quasi-experimental study with students from 31 class¬rooms (grades 6 to 9), we investigate effects on students’ attitudes towards errors as learning opportunities in two conditions: (1) an error-tolerant classroom culture and (2) condition (1) with an additional teaching of strategies for analyzing errors. Our findings show positive effects of the error-tolerant classroom culture on the affective level, whereas students are not influenced by the cognitive support. Moreover, there is no evidence for differential effects for student groups with different attitudes towards errors.