Moving Away from Marking Errors

It is not easy to make the shift to giving positive-only feedback or success-only feedback. Everything seems against making that move. As students we had our errors marked, points docked from essays; as practitioners we are primed to notice weakness and mistakes. Learners expect us, from their own experience, to mark their work with red ink. Funders of formal foundational learning programs often measure program effectiveness by attendance and levels achieved. Even learners, used to being graded, sometimes insist you mark all errors or give grades.

How difficult, then, to go against the current and begin to ignore “bad writing,” to skip over errors as if they weren’t there. Moving from “Learners can learn from their mistakes” to “Learners lose their motivation when confronted with their errors” takes many of us far outside our comfort zone. It may challenge our very identity as a teacher.

I know that coming to my program takes many learners out of their comfort zone, yet they brave it anyway. Am I willing to go out of my comfort zone to make something more comfortable for them?

If you’ve read this far, something is telling you that the Never-Fail Method is worth a try. What do you have to lose? What support can you find as you try it? What support do you need? Is there a colleague who would take the plunge with you? Or a group of colleagues?

What do you do if a learner insists you mark every error, or give a grade on a piece of writing?