This project aimed to investigate how explicit encouragement of sharing mistakes impacted on pupil confidence and growth mindset in an S1 middle-set mathematics class. The project was explained to the class and the pupils were issued an anonymous questionnaire during the first lesson. The pupils were asked to agree or disagree with opinion statements on a graded scale, giving them a score from 0 indicating a strong fixed mindset, to 39 indicating a strong growth mindset. During the second lesson, the students watched a video about how our brains grow when we make mistakes and there was a follow up discussion about the value of mistakes. In subsequent lessons, students were encouraged to share mistakes they had made in the starter or the main activity. Diagnostic questions were also used to encourage thinking about possible mistakes. A count was kept of the number of students participating in discussions about mistakes and general notes were taken about how effective these were in the learning process. At the end of the last lesson, the questionnaire was administered again.
Overall, this project had mixed results. The mean growth mindset score of the class increased, but for some students there was a negative effect. The use of questioning techniques and encouragement to share mistakes had minimal success. It might have been better to first establish a classroom culture where it was deemed safe to discuss and share mistakes. The use of diagnostic questions was much better received and considerably increased the number of students willing to take part in discussions. Diagnostic questions were, however, only useful in some of the lessons. In the class, there was sometimes mocking of those who made a mistake, and this might explain the reduction in growth mindset scores for some pupils.
The results (see section below) showed that the intervention had a statistically significant impact on the growth mindset of the students, as the mean score on the questionnaire increased from 18.79 to 20.08 over the period. However, the standard deviation also increased, so whilst for most the effect was positive, for a small number of students the intervention had a negative effect. Engagement in discussions about mistakes varied over the course of the research period (see section below). From 22 April to 3 May, students were encouraged to contribute after the starter activity. Initially only one of the more confident and able students spoke, but three more contributed in successive days. From 4 May to 10 May, there were significant behavioural issues in the classroom which meant that little attention was given to mistakes questioning or discussion. From 11 May onwards, diagnostic questions were incorporated into the lessons and the number of students engaging in the discussion increased considerably. There were also a greater number of ‘hands up’ for these questions, although the evidence only records those pupils who spoke. Multi-step problems produced the greatest engagement and these did seem to improve learning outcomes for some of the least able students.
The main evidence came from the results of the pre and post mindset questionnaire, which are shown below and highlight an increase in average growth mindset score.
The chart below also shows engagement in discussions about mistakes, over the course of the project.
It was clear that classroom culture played a big part in how mistakes were viewed and this would be an area of focus in the future. There were also concerns that for some pupils this project had a negative impact. By not anonymising questionnaire responses in future, we would be able to track pupils and ensure that mistake discussions were designed to be positive for all pupils. If repeating this project, we would also include wider measures of engagement with mistakes discussions (e.g., number of ‘hands up’ for mistakes questions, number of pupils correcting mistakes in their jotters and noting why the mistake occurred).