Assessing Adaptive Reactions to Errors in Primary School Children

Abstract: The occurrence of an error is a common event in an educational learning process. However, for errors to result in knowledge gains, students have to adjust the ongoing learning process accordingly. Research addressing such adaptive reactions to errors mainly focuses on secondary school students or undergraduates, but so far, has widely overlooked younger children, i.e., primary school students. In response to the lack of research and appropriate measures for this age group, we developed a self-report scale of adaptive reactions to errors specifically for primary school students, based on a well-established scale used for older learners. We propose a 12-item scale measuring two distinct components of adaptive reactions to errors – adaptive affective-motivational and adaptive action-related reactions to errors – which was administered in a sample of 636 German primary school students. The scale revealed satisfactory psychometric properties and very good reliability in two separate domains: Mathematics (calculating) and German (spelling). Validity evidence for the intended test score interpretation was obtained from the internal test structure and its measurement invariance, as well as from relations with other variables.