Deliberate errors promote meaningful learning.

Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 114(8), Nov 2022, 1817-1831; doi:10.1037/edu0000720Our civilization recognizes that errors can be valuable learning opportunities, but for decades, they have widely been avoided or, at best, allowed to occur as serendipitous accidents. The present research tested whether greater learning success could paradoxically be achieved through making errors by intentional design, relative to traditional errorless learning methods. We show that deliberately committing and correcting errors even when one knows the correct answers enhances learning—a counterintuitive phenomenon that we termed the derring effect. Across two experiments (N = 160), learners engaged in open-book study of scientific expository texts and were then tested on their retention and higher-order application of the material to analyze a novel news event. Deliberate error commission and correction during study produced not only better recall performance, but also superior knowledge application compared to two errorless study techniques that are popular among students and educational researchers: copying with underlining, and elaborative studying with concept mapping (Experiment 1). These learning benefits persisted even over generating alternative conceptually correct answers, revealing that the derring effect is not merely attributable to generation or elaboration alone, but is unique to producing incorrect responses (Experiment 2). Yet, learners were largely unaware of these ...
Source: Journal of Educational Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research