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By Zayna Dar, Founder, Shuhari Tuition
Mistakes are often thought of as something we should avoid. In classrooms, they’re usually treated as signs that something has gone wrong, which can make students anxious and hesitant to try. When this happens repeatedly, it can lead to students developing a reluctance or even fear of getting things wrong.
In reality, mistakes play a crucial role in developing our understanding of a concept. When we engage with challenging material, mistakes are a normal part of the learning process. We learn best when we reflect on our mistakes and use them as a tool that helps us grow and guides our next steps. This is what we mean by productive mistakes.
This blog considers why mistakes are such an important part of the learning process and what happens in the brain when you get something wrong. We’ll look at the difference between mistakes that come from simple slips and those that show you’ve misunderstood something, as well as how feedback and reflection helps you learn from your mistakes. We’ll also explore how parents and educators can create an environment where students are comfortable to work through difficulties without being afraid of getting things wrong along the way.
What happens in the brain when you get something wrong
When you make a mistake, your brain detects a mismatch between what it expected to happen and what actually happened. This is known as a prediction error, and it can trigger processes involved in attention, learning, and future behaviour.
Brain regions involved in error monitoring, including areas of the prefrontal and medial frontal cortex, help detect these discrepancies and signal that something may need to change. In this sense, mistakes can provide useful information that helps the brain recognise it needs to adjust its current understanding.
As you reflect on the mistake and work out the correct answer, neural connections associated with the correct answer are strengthened. This process is supported by memory systems involving the hippocampus, which helps integrate new information with what’s already known.
Learning from mistakes can lead to stronger understanding because your brain has actively reorganised its knowledge instead of simply reinforcing what it already assumed to be correct. The emotional context surrounding mistakes is also important. When your stress levels are high, working memory becomes overloaded. This makes it harder to understand where your thinking went wrong and how to improve next time.
When you’re anxious about getting things wrong, your mental capacity is taken up by worrying about the mistake itself, making it harder to process new information and learn from the experience. However, when you feel psychologically safe, you’re not going to worry about being judged for making a mistake. This allows you to focus on the task and think more carefully about where your reasoning went wrong.
This is why the classroom environment is so important. If you feel comfortable admitting you don’t understand something, you have a much better opportunity to address the gap in your knowledge. If you feel embarrassed by every mistake you make, you might start hiding the fact that you don’t understand something.
The same principle applies to tuition sessions. If you give an incorrect answer, the moment becomes an opportunity to explore your thinking. Being asked how you reached your answer reveals a misunderstanding that may otherwise be overlooked. It also gives you the chance to identify the point where the misunderstanding occurred. Two students can arrive at the same incorrect answer for completely different reasons. Mistakes therefore give us valuable information about where your understanding broke down.
Why the fear of mistakes slows academic progress
When you’re afraid of making mistakes, your learning becomes driven by anxiety. Your attention shifts from trying to understand something to trying to avoid getting it wrong. In the classroom, this affects the way you approach material you find challenging. If you expect to get something wrong, you may avoid answering altogether. You might wait for someone else to respond or look for reassurance before committing to an answer.
This avoidance behaviour can become a self-perpetuating cycle. You might stick to what feels safe and familiar, but by avoiding challenging yourself, you have fewer opportunities to practise the skills you find difficult. By disengaging from challenging work, your confidence remains low because you haven’t had enough experience working through your uncertainty.
Research into anxiety and learning has shown that worrying takes up valuable working memory resources. Working memory is needed when you’re solving problems or following instructions, and it links new information with older information retrieved from your long-term memory. When part of that mental capacity is occupied by thoughts such as ‘What if I get this wrong?’ there’s less capacity available for the learning task itself.
This is why creating a safe environment for mistakes to be made is so important. You need to be reassured that an incorrect answer gives you something to work with. You need opportunities to make an attempt before you’re shown the answer. You need enough time to think through your response without being rushed.
If you’re willing to make an attempt, it gives your tutor information about what you need to work on. It makes it possible to identify misconceptions and adapt the lesson accordingly. Confidence grows from this process. Each time you make an error, receive useful feedback, try again, and successfully work through the problem, you prove to yourself that you can overcome challenges.
The difference between surface-level errors and productive mistakes
Not all mistakes are created equal. Surface-level errors happen when your attention slips or steps are rushed, such as misreading a question or forgetting to add a unit of measurement. The understanding is usually there, but the final answer is incorrect, which can be frustrating for students.
Productive mistakes, by contrast, are made when you stretch yourself. For example, when trying out a method or applying knowledge in an unfamiliar context. These mistakes reveal how you’re thinking about the problem and where your understanding falls short. In this sense, the mistake is useful because it reveals exactly what needs to be worked on.
Students often struggle to tell the difference between these two types of mistakes. Without guidance, you may interpret all mistakes as evidence you’re not good at a subject. This leads to you avoiding challenging tasks and staying in your comfort zone. When you begin to see mistakes as learning opportunities, you’ll become more willing to engage with difficult material and less afraid of getting things wrong.
For parents and educators, noticing the type of mistake that’s been made is equally important. Responding to surface-level errors with reassurance and double checking the student’s work with them helps them correct their errors without judging them.
A productive mistake requires a different response. If a student has tried a new approach to a problem and reached the wrong answer, immediately correcting them denies them the opportunity for deeper thinking. Instead, asking them to explain their method makes their reasoning visible. From there, the student can identify which part of their method needs changing. This encourages metacognition, or teaching students to think about their thinking.
Why struggling is part of learning
Struggling to wrap your head around something is a normal part of learning. When a question takes a long time to work out or you can’t immediately remember how to solve it, it can be frustrating. You might start to question your ability in the subject and come to the conclusion that you’re simply not very good at it. In reality, struggling with a concept is a sign that your brain is working through information that’s new and hasn’t become familiar yet.
When you come across a challenging question, you might need to remember something you learnt previously and work out how it applies to a different context. You may realise that the method you normally use doesn’t work here and need to reconsider your approach. This takes mental effort because you’re having to make connections and figure things out. This kind of struggle is a valuable part of learning.
The level of difficulty is important here. If a task is far beyond your current understanding, repeatedly getting it wrong becomes discouraging. Productive mistakes occur when you have enough knowledge to make an attempt while still having to think carefully about the problem.
This is where personalised learning makes a big difference. Work that’s too easy doesn’t push you to go out of your comfort zone, but work that’s too difficult leaves you feeling overwhelmed and unsure of where to start. The right level of challenge gives you something to work towards while still allowing you to make progress.
As a tutor, this means paying attention to how a student responds when they become stuck. Sometimes they need a small hint to keep going. Sometimes they need to revisit a concept they previously learnt before returning to the question. Other times they need a little more time to think. Knowing when to step in and when to give a student space to work something out is essential to supporting their learning.
Giving students this space helps them become more independent learners. If a tutor provides the answer every time their student gets stuck, the student has fewer opportunities to work through the problem themselves. When they’re given time to think and the right amount of support, they gain confidence in their ability to find a solution. The aim is to give them enough guidance to point them in the right direction without doing the work for them.
Helping students make the most of their mistakes
Learning from mistakes is a skill in itself. Students aren’t automatically going to know what to do when they get something wrong. They need to learn how to respond to an incorrect answer in a constructive way. Try to resist the urge to immediately erase or correct the mistake. Keeping the original answer visible allows you to see what you were thinking at the time and compare it to what you understand now. This is useful when revising, as it ensures you don’t make the same mistake again.
It could also help to keep track of mistakes that occur repeatedly. If you keep on losing marks because you used the wrong formula, for example, it reveals a gap in your understanding or a flaw in your exam technique that needs to be addressed.
Identifying this pattern gives you a clearer idea of what needs to be revisited and helps you focus your revision where it’ll have the most impact. There’s value in going back to mistakes after some time has passed. If you can solve a question that you previously struggled with, it gives you a clear indication learning is taking place, and noticing the progress you’re making can be very motivating.
Why correcting a mistake matters for memory
Getting something wrong can be useful, but only if the correction sticks in your mind. If you make a mistake, look at the answer, and then move on without thinking about it, there’s a chance you’ll make the same mistake again when you come across a similar question.
This is where retrieval becomes important. When you try to remember something, your brain is actively bringing information back from your long-term memory. The act of retrieving information strengthens your ability to access it again in the future. When your answer is incorrect, seeing the correct information afterwards gives your brain an opportunity to update what you previously thought was correct.
For example, imagine you’re learning how to calculate the area of a triangle. You use the incorrect formula and get the answer wrong. After checking the correct formula, you close your notes and try to recall it yourself. You then use the formula on a new question. Having to retrieve the formula and apply it again helps reinforce the correct method, making it easier to remember when you come across a similar problem again.
This also explains why correcting mistakes can be more memorable than simply getting a question right. When your answer is wrong, you have a clear point of comparison between what you believed and what is actually correct. That difference reinforces the correct information and gives you a reason to remember it. For students, this means that an incorrect answer is a useful memory cue. The goal is for the mistake to become something you learn from so that the same mistake becomes less likely to happen again in the future.
Making mistakes part of learning
Mistakes are an unavoidable part of learning, especially when you’re working on something you find challenging. But every incorrect answer gives you information about your current understanding and what still needs attention. Learning to use that information is a valuable skill that you can apply to every subject.
It’s important to have the courage to give it a go even if you’re unsure. An incorrect answer gives you a starting point for figuring out what went wrong. When you become more comfortable with this process, difficult questions become less intimidating and can be approached with greater confidence.
For parents and educators, the way mistakes are handled has a big impact on how students respond to challenges. Giving a student time to think, encouraging them to explain their reasoning, and helping them identify what they can learn from a mistake creates an environment conducive to learning.
The aim is to help students become resilient learners who are willing to tackle difficult questions and learn from their mistakes. A mistake can be frustrating in the moment, but with the right support, it can also be one of the most valuable parts of the learning process.
