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Mistakes are a natural part of learning, but students cannot develop into critical thinkers if they regularly freeze out of the fear of making a mistake. As educators, we can shift the culture of our classrooms to embrace mistakes, and one way to do this is through mistake analysis, one of several powerful but practical strategies I share in my book, Thinking Like a Lawyer: A Practical Framework to Teach Critical Thinking to All Students. As a math-teacher-turned-attorney, I wrote this book and started my organization, thinkLaw, to help educators seamlessly incorporate critical thinking into their curriculum.

Via John Evans

Are mistakes a part of the learning process? If they are, what does this say about our current education system? This post explores these ideas, asking the following questions and following each with a number of responses that explores each question in greater detail. The first section has two questions:

* Why are mistakes important to achieve engagement and learning?

* Why do we avoid mistakes in our current model?

The second section, Turning Mistakes into Learning Opportunities asks one question:

* How can we use learning errors to our advantage?

At the beginning of this post the author speaks of James Joyce, and also does so at the end where she states (referring to Joyce) "a true genius sees all learning as an opportunity to improve and discover. Errors are taken at will. In making mistakes, we can reach new heights and find our true genius." Will schools move in this direction?

Via Beth Dichter