material is to test yourself, so that you keep having to recall the material—and hopefully make mistakes and correct them along the way. Learning scientists point out that these tests should not be performance events, as these cause stress and reduce the learning experience. Nonevaluative self-testing or peer testing is most beneficial.12
Teaching the Value of Mistakes
As neuroscience becomes more established as a field, it seems that more and more evidence is revealing the value of mistakes and struggle. Good teachers have known this intuitively and impressed upon learners that mistakes are really good opportunities for learning. Unfortunately, I have found that this message is not strong enough to keep students from feeling bad when they make mistakes—often because of the performance culture in which many good teachers work. Even when the message is phrased more powerfully—that mistakes are good not only for learning, but for brain growth and connectivity—it is hard for teachers to send it in a system in which they are made to give students tests that penalize them every time they make a mistake.
This highlights the challenge of changing education—it is a complex system that has many different parts, all of which impact each other. Teachers can give the right messages to students, but then witness their messages being undermined by a practice that is imposed by their school district. This is why I encourage any teacher who learns about effective messages and teaching ideas to share them not only with their students, but with administrators and parents as well.
When teachers encourage students to make mistakes and struggle, it is incredibly freeing. New Zealand second-grade teacher Suzanne Harris began teaching in an era of procedural teaching and timed testing. When she read one of my books, she knew that what she felt was right was backed up by research and asked her principal if she could teach the “Jo Boaler way”! He agreed. Suzanne went on to make many changes, one of which was to explain the positive benefits of mistakes and struggle to her students. In my interview with Suzanne, she described how this and other messages had changed things for a young boy in her class.
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