The Power of Our Mistakes
How does a sweater keep us warm?
Children want to make sense of the world. As their brains are flooded with experiences and information, they need to organize and comprehend the information. Brain researchers believe that children structure information in ways that differ with their experiences, their personalities, their temperaments, and their cultures.
Highly regarded researchers, like Howard Gardner and Lauren Resnick, say children actually form their own theories about the way the world works in their pre-school years. Kids may cling to their theories even if what they learn in school contradicts their early beliefs.
For example, one fourth grade teacher discovered that her students believed that they put on their sweaters in the winter because the sweaters produced heat. They had been learning about heat since kindergarten, but their pre-school “theory” that sweaters produce heat had not been replaced by a more scientific explanation.
How did the teacher change their minds?
She used good instructional techniques.
First, she allowed the children to state their ideas at the beginning of the unit without judging these ideas herself.
Second, she used that information to design the major part of the unit—having the students design experiments to test their theories.
Finally, she allowed the children to explain how their experiments had disproven their original theory.
What parents can do...
When our children state beliefs that we think are highly inaccurate, encourage them to design a “proof.”
We don’t have to challenge their ideas in a negative way; we just have to ask them to show us how they formed that idea. Using the internet and other resources, we can help our children seek out information that will help them discover new ideas and form better conclusions.
We really do learn from our mistakes. Teach your child that all errors are opportunities for learning.