You may have noticed a mistake or two in the text of this blog.  There are at least 8 (a light-hearted illustration on my part of the theme of the blog).  Can you find them all?  You may email me at remusser@uams.edu for a list of the ones I intentionally included.

Oops.  I did it again.  I apologize.  My misteak.  Earlier this week I sent an email to a colleague, and I included a brief description of the file I attached.  Guess what—I failed to attach the document.  Know what happened the next time I sent that same person an attachment?  Your right, I attached the document.  Why are we so afraid to goof up?  In the book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, the author Peterr C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel make the observation, “. . . errors are an integral part of striving to increase one’s mastery over new material.”  And later in the discussion they add, “When learners commit errors and are given corrective feedback, the errors are not learned.”  This finding is in contrast to a widely-held belief that the very act of making a mistake reinforces that mistake in the mind and actions of the learner.  Not so, if the learner or the instructor provide reflection and correction.

Some of the Best Learning is Built on Errors

I can hear the naysayers (myself included) push back that some errors are more critical than others.  As Stewart on the TV show “The Big Bang theory” observed, “It’s wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable; it’s very wrong to say it’s a suspension bridge.’  I don’t want my surgeon or my airline pilot getting it wrong.  That’s why there are flight simulators and practice ahead of time—it’s better to make our mistakes in the learning lab than on the actual job.  With reflection and another go at it we learn, and we do better.  We do make mistakes; the time tested statement is correct, “to err is human.”  It might be nice to live an error-free life in an error-free world, but we do not.  In fact, contrary to our expectations the best learning is built on failures and on the subsequent efforts to evaluate what went wrong, why, and how to avoid that problem next time.  After all, Edison’s light bulb was not nearly his first attempt nor was he the first person to create an electric light.

In our culture to accept mistakes, even more to embrace them as a valued component of learning, goes against the grain.   One of the unfortunate affects of this attitude is that we become risk averse, unlikely to test new skills or to try new ways of thinking.  Yet, novel thinking and novel methods are necessary for improvement.  So, give yourself a brake.  Embrace your mistakes.  Do note them, examine them (why did that happen, what exactly happened, how can I do better next time), and learn.