Let’s look at a familiar case: you ask a question to check for understanding during a lesson. Some students jump with an answer, some are tentative, some don’t risk answering at all. For them, not answering means you can’t get it wrong. Whether it’s perfectionism, fear of failure, or fear of being perceived at all, it leads to the same barrier for teachers. A blank box we need to fill with information about that student’s understanding that they aren’t forthcoming in helping us fill.
In discussing the importance of checking for understanding, Corinne Settle from the Education Endowment Foundation advises:
“Create conditions where students feel safe to make mistakes
Pupils need to feel that guesses, half-formed thoughts, and early ideas are warmly welcomed. Mistakes are information, not identity.”
(“Adaptive teaching in practice: using feedback to check understanding”, Corinne Settle, https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/effective-teacher-feedback-understanding-in-adaptive-teaching )
For those students reluctant to raise a hand or write an answer, multiple-choice can be a lower barrier entry point for assessment that “engages them in the lesson in a visible way” for the teacher. Cultivating a culture of wrong answers are not the end, but a signpost along the way in learning, can also help break down those barriers.
Reluctance to try as a symptom
“Reluctance to try” is just one of many symptoms of students who lack resilience (“Why is Resilience Important for students”, Liz Robson, https://www.worthit.org.uk/blog/students-resilience ). The lack of resilience can have a lot of core causes and impacts a student’s performance, relationships, and well-being in a myriad of ways.
We see the efforts teachers go through to engage pupils and build up their resilience generally, but especially in preparation for final assessment. With looming exams, we all want pupils to overcome the “reluctance to try” and feel confident engaging with the assessment and demonstrating their understanding to the best of their ability. But even before that final assessment, regular daily and weekly assessment are vital to the process of learning, especially in diagnosing where learning hasn’t landed correctly or hasn’t stuck, so that teachers can adapt and intervene. Building resilience to lower-stakes assessment is an important stepping-stone in this journey.
The importance of academic resilience to progression
Academic resilience is also vital as students move between academic stages, especially as the demand for and difficulty of skills ramps up, for example, independent learning skills.
“Independent learning skills have to be developed to greater degrees as students move further through education, and while at some stages the development of these skills can be gradual concomitant with the progressing demands of a course, when students move between educational stages the level of skill required suddenly increases substantially.” (The Tony Little Centre, Innovation and Research in Learning, https://www.sixthformcolleges.org/1412/blog-6/post/35/academic-resilience-why-sixth-formers-need-it-and-how-to-build-it )
Resilience allows students to adapt to the steep rise in demand seen in the jump from KS4 to A-level, of from A-level to university. Building that resilience in early stages where the demand and stakes are lower helps build a foundation for success later.
Educake’s ambition to support building resilience
Every decision at Educake has students at the forefront. How do we reduce the barrier to doing homework and participating in assessment that provides value to both students and teachers? How do we enable students to demonstrate their understanding? How can we make this feel friendly and low-stakes?
For us, creating “conditions where students feel safe to make mistakes” is integral to dozens of decisions we make, including:
- language used in our feedback when a student answers incorrectly.
- the language we use to write questions to keep terminology accessible, sentences concise and explanations straightforward.
- the styling of the site which aims to strict a balance between colourful, friendly, and accessible without feeling childish or patronising.
- the tools for teachers, like being able to see approximately how long their quiz will take so they can set manageable size work.
- the ability for students to review quizzes they’ve done and retake them to improve.
- and so much more.
All of which is to help students understand that wrong answers are not an end, just a signpost to help direct them. The independent study tools for students have been designed to this end – so that students’ own data is accessible to them and can be used to signpost them towards more informed revision decisions. Every wrong answer helps point them towards the most productive use of their revision time. This is especially valuable at A-level, with it’s increased demand for independent study time. With a huge amount of content to get through, we can help make sure students know what they don’t know, utilise their time efficiently.
Written by Constance Young, Head of Editorial at Educake. Constance is a publisher with a history in STEM publishing in edtech and with a passion for enabling students to reach their potential and inspire a love of STEM learning.
