What can teachers and students learn from “wrong” answers?

Today’s post is the first in a series answering that question.

‘Wrong Answers’ Can Be the ‘Backbone’ of the Classroom

Aneesha Badrinarayan is a neuroscientist and science learning and assessment expert who focuses on human-centered design of teaching, learning, and assessment systems. Her book, Surfacing Brilliance through Meaningful Science Assessment tackles evidence-based approaches for robust assessment practices that enhance learning:

It can be so tempting to call out wrong answers,  with a “nope!,” an immediate correction, or seeking and praising the right answer. But what happens to the students who responded with the incorrect answer when we do this? 

• Students have a new fact that they are supposed to “know”—but it’s disconnected from their experiences and understanding they have to date. They might be able to restate the corrected understanding back to you, but its unlikely it’s actually sticking. 
  
• We’re signaling to students that what matters is getting the right answer, rather than the thinking process that leads to it.
  
• Students feel ignorant and like their experiences and reasoning are wrong. Over time, they’re less likely to share their ideas in class, to carry learning from class into their lived experiences, and may assume that whatever they are learning just “isn’t for them.” 

We’ve all grown up in an education system that values being right, but getting the right answer isn’t actually the point of school, learning is. From a learning standpoint, wrong answers aren’t failures or something to be embarrassed of—for students OR teachers. While they may not be immediately or completely accurate, they nearly always reflect something about students’ prior knowledge, lived experience, and reasoning processes, and these can provide the stepping stones for deeper learning and more sophisticated understanding.

If we reframe our approach to wrong answers from “misconceptions to be fixed” to “incomplete understanding to be deepened,” wrong answers can actually become the backbone of some of the most meaningful and empowering learning experiences in our classroom.

In the face of wrong answers, we can ask ourselves: Why would an intelligent, observant person have this idea or respond this way? A response to students might look like:

• Asking the student to share more of their thinking: “Tell me more. What makes you think that?”
  
• Introducing a puzzling and productive counter-example to their lived experience to engage the class in shared sensemaking: “Huh, you’re right. Is that always the case? How might we explain this other observation we made together?”
  
• Invite shared sensemaking from students’ peers, building on the students’ ideas: “Has anyone else had an experience like this or very different? How can we explain both of those experiences?”

This approach honors students as thinkers, models complex reasoning and social sensemaking, and positions learning as a continuous process of revisiting and renegotiating our understanding of the world based on new questions.

‘A Temporary Perch’

Ralph Pantozzi is a Presidential Awardee in Mathematics Teaching and has been a classroom teacher and supervisor in New Jersey schools for 32 years:

Have you ever asked someone the wrong question, in the classroom or elsewhere?

For example, you may think your question was clear, but the receiver gives you an unexpected answer that seems off topic. Your question may be interpreted in a way other than you intended, resulting in embarrassment, anger, or other reactions on either end of the exchange. You may ask a question that is well understood, gets a valid answer, but doesn’t get at the thing you were actually looking to find out. Sometimes, the timing of a question is wrong.

In the classroom, “asking the wrong question” may be a common occurrence. Teachers ask questions for many reasons, but if our goal is to get at what students are thinking, questions sometimes need to go through multiple rounds of revision. Wrong answers, then, should also be a common occurrence, and students should know this.

As a teacher, I can let students know the intent of some of my most important questions: Get an answer (right or wrong) and promote a dialogue.

We should let students know that like “first drafts” in a writing class, wrong answers are a step along the way to an eventual destination. There are indeed wrong answers, but when the goal is to promote dialogue, students should understand that no one, no question, and no answer is the final end to discussion. Even when we land on the “right question” and the right answer, it is only a temporary perch.

The history (and present) of any subject, math included, is littered with wrong answers that were noticed quickly and some for not quite some time. Let students know that they are part of a long tradition!

‘A Sign of Strength’

Ann Stiltner is a high school special education and reading teacher in Connecticut with more than 20 years of experience. She shares her passion and love for working in the classroom at her blog from Room A212 (www.annstiltner.com/blog):

The quotation marks around wrong in this question summarize my thinking about “wrong” answers. In my opinion, “wrong” answers should not be seen as a negative. Answers of any kind give me insights into my students’ thinking, the clarity of my instruction, and the needs of my students.

“Wrong” answers allow me to get a glimpse into the thinking and processing of my students’ minds. I take into account what I know about them in terms of their strengths, needs, disabilities, interests, prior knowledge, and lived experience. If a student’s answer is not the one I expected, this information helps me figure out what misunderstanding the student is communicating that I should work to address. I question myself to make sure there is nothing in my instruction that has confused students’ understanding of the content. If they are confused, then I need to reexplain, modeling for students how even adults make mistakes.

My response when a student gives an incorrect answer during a discussion is key to setting the tone for academic discourse. I do not want to react in any way that suggests I am negating their idea. My goal is to develop their thinking and knowledge to lead them to the correct information or understanding. I use a growth-mindset approach, which helps when students tease another student for sharing a “wrong” answer. It is essential that I set the tone so that when we have discussions and share our thinking, we respect each other. I also will privately speak to students after class if they are not being supportive of another student.

The way I respond to “wrong” answers gives me information about the thinking of the student. Sometimes, I need to ask the student to rephrase what I’m asking because I can tell by their answer they don’t understand my question. Sometimes, I need to ask them to rethink a certain bit of information to help them move toward a better answer.

Other times, depending on the student’s needs and what I know about that student as a learner, I may realize that my question was too open-ended. In this case, I can change it to a multiple-choice question, so the student can choose instead of trying to develop the answer on the spot from their memory. Also, some students require me to provide certain words to help them answer my questions because their vocabulary or word-retrieval skills are weak.

I make these choices because I want students to understand that part of any learning activity involves taking risks and sometimes making an error. I model this approach to “wrong” answers by sharing the mistakes and misunderstandings I had and how I had to take risks to develop my thinking. It is a sign of strength and bravery to take a risk to put an idea out there and refine it with the help of others.

An all-or-nothing, good-or-bad dichotomy, being too focused on grades and the right answer instead of learning, can backfire, limiting one’s growth. Students don’t understand that “wrong” answers can be very helpful for developing one’s abilities to reason and problem-solve. I remind students that the goal of our work together is not to get right answers but to learn from our “wrong” answers. That’s the best way for us to grow as learners.

Thanks to Aneesha, Ralph, and Ann for contributing their thoughts.

Responders today answered this question:

What are ways you respond to students giving the “wrong” answer to questions, how do you think about “wrong” answers in the context of teaching, and how do you want students to think about them?

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on X at @Larryferlazzo or on Bluesky at @larryferlazzo.bsky.social

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 13 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list here.