Interview Focused on Cross-cultural Study of Student and Teacher Responses to Mistakes

New York Times Columnist Alina Tugend interviewed Assistant Professor Rossella Santagata as part of her research for a book on mistakes. Ms. Tugend is exploring how children learn to respond to mistakes, cultural and gender differences in responding to and learning from mistakes, and adult response to mistakes in the workplace and in the political arena.

Dr. Santagata’s research foci include learning, development, and culture; video and teacher learning; and mathematics teaching. She pursues cross cultural research on strategies mathematics teachers use to handle students' mistakes during instruction. Her earlier dissertation research focused on the analysis of strategies teachers in the US and Italy use to handle students' mistakes during mathematics lessons. The project unveiled certain cultural beliefs and practices. US teachers, for example, were observed to avoid discussions involving mistakes and to mitigate responses to students' mistakes more often than Italian teachers.

During the interview Ms. Tugend and Dr. Santagata discussed the role of students' mistakes in teaching and learning. Ms. Tugend was particularly interested in better understanding of how cultural values, beliefs, and practices might inform ways we socialize children to deal with mistakes in U.S. school.