Embracing Mistakes to Cultivate Scientific Literacy in Our Students

摘要

As a new teacher, 1 remember dreading when lab activities didn't go as planned. Who hasn'thad a great lab planned and then something goes wrong? You don't get the right results...epic failure! Now your entire lesson is ruined. Or is it? It did not take long for me to realize how much more my students were able to learn when things didn't go as planned. I soon embraced the mistakes and looked forward to the opportunity to guide my students through an analysis of what went wrong and why our results were different than anticipated. Even more exciting was watching my students engage in this process on their own. Recent research on the benefits of learning from errors and a renewed look at the dimensions required for science literacy provide opportunities for agriculture teachers to embrace mistakes in the classroom to cultivate the scientific literacy of our students.