Error (pedagogy)

See also: Error

In Pedagogy, the error indicates an answer or a behavior of learning (raises, training) which does not correspond to the answer, with the awaited behavior.

If, traditionally, the concept of error is related to the idea of Faute with its negative connotations, the current designs of pedagogy recommend that the errors of the pupils are taken into account by the teacher. Indeed, the error is not any more the demonstration of a not-knowledge which it is advisable to be unaware of or correct immediately, but of an inadequate knowledge on which correct knowledge could be built.

Moreover, the error seems to be inevitable in the normal process of the training.

On the one hand one could not consider a teacher delivering a teaching perfectly adapted to all his learning. In addition the people do not have the same capacities of training according to the field considered and the manner of learning. Lastly, the error is desirable, because it is formative:

  • an error made during the training will be more rarely repeated in real situation;
  • the conscience that one can be mistaken gives a capacity of questioning and of adaptation, it makes become aware of the interest to be formed.
A contrario , a too frequent repetition of errors can discourage learning it.

An error of learning can sometimes reveal an error of the teacher: indeed, this one can have transmitted inaccurate information or erroneous , or to use an unsuited pedagogy.

The error forms inherent part of the Apprentissage, it is thus appropriate to analyze it in order to set up adapted teaching situations.

To include/understand the error

Some reference marks concerning the concept of error

In 1956, on the question of the knowledge and the experiment, Célestin Freinet adopts the experimental groping: he affirmed: “It is while speaking that child learns how to speak; it is while drawing that he learns how to draw”. He thus highlights the practice of the tests and the errors, and speaks about “obstacles which will make stopping”.

In 1938, Gaston Bachelard had defined besides the concept of obstacle epistemological: “One knows against a former knowledge, by destroying badly made knowledge, by surmounting what, in the spirit even, made obstacle with the Spiritualisation”.

Origins of the error

There exist various types of errors which one can classify by origin.

  • Some are related to the limitation of learning.

This limitation can be due to the developmental stage subject: for example, according to the age, a child has a capacity more or less raised to concentrate, to retain and reproduce, to abstract.
It can as be related to the Représentation as the subject has concept given: it should then be helped to become aware of the insufficiency of its designs to make them evolve/move. Progress will be brought either by the others (conflict situations socio- cognitive, the group forms a Norme), or by the medium itself (conflict situations cognitive, learning it notes by experiment that its representation is insufficient).
the representation which the subject has of itself as learning also plays a part.
the cognitive overload, the mental effects of work, can become excessive because of simultaneous management several activities, lack of automated procedures or maintenance of the subject in expensive algorithms. That highlights the need for the management of time (to arrange times of pause, to manage the workload).

  • the error can as be caused by the design as learning it concept concerned was built.

It can be epistemological Didactique (axis Master-knowledge) or (pole of the knowledge)

  • Enfin the error can be related to the rules of the didactic contract .

Treatment of the error

Detection of the error

The detection of the errors is field of the Docimologie (science of the evaluation).

Although it is necessarily subjective, the evaluation is an essential tool throughout the training. According to the finality that one gives him, there exist various types of evaluation which are at times different from the training.

  • Before the training, it is diagnostic and must make it possible to identify where are the pupils. National evaluations are carried out to this end at each beginning of educational cycle, and become thus essential tools for the teacher.
  • During, it is primarily formative for the pupil whom it must allow to locate himself, to analyze his processes of training, to appreciate its evolutions. For the teacher, it is formative, and analyzes it errors is in the middle of its device of differentiation;
  • After the training, it becomes sommative. It is called in a more common way “controls”.

The interest of such evaluations is well to locate (by the teacher but especially by learning) the types of errors concerned, and not just to indicate what is Vrai or what is Faux.

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