Reading Psychology, 21:353–372, 2000
Copyright © 2000 Taylor & Francis
0270–2711/00 $12.00 + .00
THE DILEMMA OF ERROR AND ACCURACY:
AN EXPLORATION
MARY ALICE BARKSDALE-LADD and JAMES R. KING
University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA
This paper reports on the research on error and accuracy within the realms of
constructivism, reading, and writing, and describes an exploratory study of
teacher perceptions of approaches to addressing error and accuracy in literacy
instruction. Findings demonstrate that teachers who self-reported that they were
developing constructivist approaches to classroom instructional practices had
contradictory beliefs about dealing with reading and writing errors. There were
also contradictory beliefs about addressing reading and writing errors with moreand less-able readers and writers. The teachers were solid in their conviction
that students’ inaccurate constructions of knowledge should be corrected through
inquiry, but were unable to provide examples of instances in which they had
done so.
During this century, literacy researchers have studied errors in
reading and writing extensively. Teacher treatment of errors in
reading and writing has also been significantly addressed (Johnston
& Allington, 1991). As instructional approaches have turned toward constructivism, there have been many changes in perspectives on the meanings of teaching and learning (Gergen, 1985;
Spivey, 1997). However, little has been written about how teaching
approaches founded in constructivism might lead to necessary alterations in the meanings of error and accuracy and what they can
represent within the learning process.
The constructivist perspective holds that people are constructive agents who learn and know through the creation of constructed
products (Bruner & Feldman, 1990). Constructivists see learning
as a process in which individual ways of knowing, understanding,
perceiving, and valuing are at the essence of the construction of
meaning. Constructivist teachers create learning experiences with
Address correspondence to Mary Alice Barksdale-Ladd, 3920 Florida Ranch Blvd.,
Zephyrhills, FL 33541. E-mail: mabl@typhoon.coedu.usf.edu
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the expectation that students may learn differently from each other
and differently from the teacher’s expectations. Constructivist
teachers utilize collaborative groups and different types of social
interactions that allow students to learn from one another and
share their constructed learning publicly. Using individual performances as products, a group sense of what counts as knowledge
emerges (Spivey, 1997).
If we truly invest ourselves in constructivist pedagogy, an important outgrowth becomes the question, What is error? And, what is
accuracy? If the meanings learners construct through their experiences are viewed as the closest approximation to accuracy of which
they are developmentally capable at a given time, can these constructions be errors? Should constructivist teachers simply ignore
what they see as an error in the hope that more accurate constructions will appear later? No, we are not suggesting that teachers
encourage students to construct inaccurate understandings and
accept them as truth. Instead, our interest is in the study of how
teachers construct understandings of errors and how they deploy
these understandings during literacy instruction with children. To
this end, we examine the literature on errors in reading and writing.
In developing understandings of how children acquire reading
abilities, why reading problems occur, and how they can be corrected, the investigation of students’ errors has been a primary
route taken in the construction of knowledge by researchers
(Allington, 1980, 1983; K. Goodman, 1965; Y. Goodman & Burke,
1972; Johnston, 1993). Teachers also have a history of attending
to student errors. As children learn to read, errors are pointed out
and children are assisted in learning how to be error-free in their
reading (Allington, 1983). From early childhood, our society
teaches us that our reading is at its best when there are no errors.
During their preservice programs in elementary education, students are often given intensive instruction in how to assess error
in reading. When we look at our societal and teacher education
focus on the analysis of errors in reading, it is no surprise that
teachers of reading are fixated on errors.
Examination of students’ errors or miscues during their literacy
work is not a new practice. For example, Powell (1970, 1980) devoted considerable attention to readers’ oral reading errors in
order to determine the validity of IRI reading levels. In another
example, the highly influential miscue analysis (K. Goodman, 1969;
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Y. Goodman & Burke, 1972) as well as the currently ubiquitous
Running Record (Clay, 1993) both closely examine the quality of
readers’ miscues while the readers were engaged in the act of reading. In fact, the current study owes much to previous examinations that count and categorize miscues. The current study,
however, differs from previous studies in that the judgment of reading and writing “error” as well as the description enabled by the
“miscue” are being questioned. This study intends to question, or
problematize, the very notion of error in literacy.
It is fascinating that there has been so little research on teacher
responses to errors in reading. Allington (1983) showed that teachers tend to interrupt weaker readers more frequently than better
readers when they made oral reading errors. These teachers felt
that poorer readers needed correct word identification if they were
to comprehend properly, whereas stronger students were more
likely to comprehend despite errors, or that they would correct
their own errors. The literature does not provide evidence that
correcting students’ reading errors improves their ability to read.
Allington (1980, 1983) concludes that the correction of oral reading errors is disruptive to comprehension. Further, there is no direct evidence that when a teacher corrects a reading error, the
likelihood of repetitions of the error are decreased.
We do know that errors in reading are never random and we
know a great deal about what reading errors may be able to tell
teachers (Johnston, 1993). When a reader self-corrects a reading
miscue, this reader is on the verge of “knowing” the word and
understanding how to identify it. When a reader knows an error
has occurred, but is unable to self-correct, the child is ready for
instruction which will make it possible to avoid this miscue (and
possibly others) in the future. When a reader makes a miscue and
does not realize that it has occurred, there are two likely conclusions. One reasonable conclusion is that the reading material is
simply too difficult for the child. A second likelihood is that the
child is not yet developmentally ready for instruction that would
make it possible to correct the miscue in the future (Johnston,
1993). Thus, careful attention to children’s responses to their own
oral reading miscues could form a foundation for teacher decisions about appropriate reading instruction. However, we find no
evidence that teachers engage in this type of thinking about students and their errors in reading.
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So, how do teachers think about errors in reading? When do
they feel that errors should be addressed, and how do teachers
report that they address reading errors? These research questions
are addressed in our study, but first, let’s move on to error in writing.
Errors in writing have been studied by researchers with the same
enthusiasm as errors in reading, and we know that, historically,
teachers have been fastidious about error identification in writing
(Haswell, 1988; Williams, 1981). Because there are specific rules
for writing, it would seem reasonable to assume that the identification of errors in writing is a fairly straightforward process. It is
not. Conners and Lunsford (1988) found that teachers marked
43% of the most serious errors (top 20), ignoring a whopping 57%.
There was much variability in teacher perceptions of serious,
markable errors, and the reasoning behind marking or not marking each error was amazingly complex. Reasons for differential
marking of writing errors included (a) the perceived need of the
student, (b) the stage of the composing process, (c) how serious
or irritating the error was where it occurred, and (d) how much
difficulty was involved in marking the error and explaining the
mistake. The identification of errors in writing turns out to be a
highly personal process steeped in personal impressions about students, beliefs about writing and the writing process, and instructor biases.
Another aspect of the complexity of identifying writing errors
involves the focus of the instructor. One approach to identifying
writing errors is to focus on use of words, sentence construction,
punctuation, spelling, and grammar. The problem with this approach is that it causes the instructor to lose sight of the content.
When content becomes the focus, it is not possible to simultaneously attend to the words, sentences, punctuation, spelling, and
grammar (Williams, 1981). It appears to be impossible to maintain a simultaneous focus on both technical aspects of writing and
the content of the paper. Thus, instructor focus tends to vary during the reading of student texts. Because instructor focus varies
between the content and the mechanics, and is a function of choice
from moment to moment, the identification of error in students’
writing is as much about the instructor as it is about the student
and the writing. Further, writing errors have two quite different
foundations—the grammarian’s handbook and the instructor’s
mind.
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If errors in writing are to be identified by teachers, what is the
purpose of their identification? As was the case in reading, we found
no evidence that marking errors in writing leads to improved writing on the part of students. To the contrary, Haswell (1988) concluded that errors in writing are a necessary part of writing
improvement, and identifying and correcting writing errors may
actually be detrimental to writing development. For instance, as
writers mature, they attempt to create more complex sentences.
During these attempts at greater complexity, numbers of certain
types of writing errors may increase (Freedman & Pringle, 1980;
Steward & Grobe, 1979).
As was also the case in reading, writing errors are never random, and they can be viewed as “evidence of intention”
(Bartholomae, 1980, p. 255). When asked to read their written
products orally, the students in Bartholomae’s study corrected their
mistakes, without recognizing the mistakes or realizing that they
had corrected them (this finding was also reported by Perl, 1979).
When these students read their writings, they demonstrated grammatical competence. Their writing errors were reflective of a problem in the performance of writing, not in the ability to use language
correctly (Bartholomae, 1980).
This research may have numerous implications. In school, developing writers are generally taught to use a process approach to
writing. Students select topics, write drafts, revise, edit, and share
their written products with audiences. If college-level basic writers
are unable to see and correct the errors in their own writing because their meanings are set and well understood, it would appear
to be quite unreasonable that we would expect emergent writers
to experience success in editing their own work. The studies of
errors in writing that have been examined here all involved adult
writing and college/university instructors. The degree to which
findings regarding error in adult writing relate to error in children’s
writing is unclear, and there are many possible lines of inquiry
here that are yet unexplored. A first step is to examine teacher
perceptions about children’s writing errors.
Research Questions
This study is an initial step in exploring how teachers think about
responses to student errors in reading and writing. We asked the
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following research questions: (a) how do teachers think about errors in reading? (b) when do teachers feel that reading errors
should be addressed, and how do teachers self-report that they
address reading errors? (c) how do teachers think about errors in
writing? (d) when do teachers feel that writing errors should be
addressed, and how do teachers self-report that they address writing errors? (e) how do teachers use knowledge gained from attention to student reading and writing errors in their teaching? and
(f) how do teachers address inaccurate student constructions of
knowledge?
Method
Because it was an exploratory study, a multi-method, multi-site
qualitative interview format was utilized. A scenario was constructed
for opening an engaging discussion on accuracy and error (Appendix A). The example was framed in language arts and related
to science. Anticipating that some of the participants would struggle
with the concepts in the scenario, we thought it would create a
disequilibrium that might disrupt normal ways of thinking about
accuracy and error and lead to an open discussion of the points
addressed in the research questions. Each participant was presented
with the scenario immediately prior to the interview, and after
participants had completed their reading of the scenario, we began the interviews.
Participants
Nineteen female teachers participated in the study—a group of
six, a group of three, and a group of ten. All of the teachers selected for the study self-reported that they were engaged in the
development of constructivist approaches to their classroom instruction and all taught reading and writing in their classrooms.
Teachers in the populations from which we drew our participants
who did not feel that they met these criteria did not participate in
the study.
Six of the teachers were taking a course from Dr. BarksdaleLadd, author 1. They were all students in a Master’s degree program in reading and taught in schools in a southern state. This
course occurs at the end of the program; thus, these teachers could
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be considered knowledgeable about literacy and literacy instruction. These teachers participated in an audiotaped focus-group
interview based upon the scenario designed for the study. This
interview took two hours and fifteen minutes.
A second focus-group interview was conducted with three elementary teachers who each held a master’s degree in reading.
These teachers were selected to participate in the study because of
their instructional focus upon writing across the curriculum and
because of their involvement in a school-wide “Students as Authors” project (Barksdale-Ladd & King, 1997). These teachers also
participated in an audiotaped focus group interview based upon
the scenario. The interview lasted 55 minutes.
The third group included ten doctoral students in a language
arts theory course taught by Dr. King, author 2. The ten were all
classroom teachers who taught reading and writing. These participants interviewed one another in pairs (using the scenario) and
took detailed notes during the interviews. One week later, each
participant submitted a detailed accounting of the results of their
interview, reporting the other’s treatment of and beliefs about error and accuracy in reading and writing. The paired interviews
were of an hour to and hour an fifteen minutes in length, including both interviews.
Among the nineteen participants, seventeen were elementary
(K–5) teachers, one was a middle school reading teacher, and one
was a high school English teacher. This group of teachers can be
considered exemplary in that they all held or were seeking Master’s
or doctoral degrees in reading. The teachers had between 3 and
24 years experience, with a mean of 8 years of experience across
the group.
Analysis
The tape-recorded focus-group interviews were transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were read by both researchers for categories.
Recommendations for the analysis of interview data as described
by Hycner (1985) were utilized. We met to compare categories
and reached agreement on a limited set of themes. Then we reread the transcripts for instances of the themes. Examples of themes
were checked with each other. Next, the reports written on the
peer interviews were used as texts and were read by both research-
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ers. We isolated themes in the reports and again elicited examples
of the themes from the reports. Comparisons between the focus
group interview themes and examples and the peer interview
themes and examples were made, demonstrating that there were
no qualitative differences between the two data sets. Pseudonyms
have been used in reporting the results to assure participant
confidentiality.
Results
Primary themes included teacher perceptions about: (a) addressing writing errors, (b) addressing reading errors, (c) addressing
reading and writing errors with more and less skills readers and
writers, (d) using knowledge gained from student errors to inform
instruction, and (e) student construction of inaccurate knowledge.
Writing Errors
The nineteen teachers who participated in this study overwhelmingly agreed that children should be taught to use the writing process, and thus, that writing errors should be allowed and even
encouraged during prewriting, drafting, and revising. What Anna
said was representative: “We want them to attempt and risk. Miscues and invented spellings are encouraged without the threat of
needing accuracy.” Sue furthered this perspective: “You put accuracy on the back burner because otherwise, you just squelch forever that creative flame.”
The teachers provided a commonly understood rationale for
allowing and encouraging errors during the early stages of the
writing process. Alison explained, “In writing, the children know
what their ideas are, and if the words aren’t exactly correct, they
can still express their thoughts.” Because writers own the ideas
about which they are writing, the teachers agreed that there was
no need to be concerned about writing errors; after all, those errors did not reflect a lack of understanding about the topic. Writing errors were accepted as a natural and necessary part of the
writing process.
The teachers also agreed that at the later stages of the writing
process—editing and publishing—writing errors should be corrected. As Mattie explained, “As the process develops, we go on
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down to revising and editing. In editing, with the teacher or a peer
editor, that’s when you start to get a little more particular about
what is written as far as spelling and punctuation and grammar.”
The teachers had somewhat different strategies for assisting students in correcting their errors during the editing process; however, all of the seventeen elementary teachers placed themselves
in the position of final editor. For instance, Mattie said that she
first used peer editing and encouraged the children to work together to correct all of the errors they could find. Then, she came
in as “top editor,” because “there are some things that other kids
miss, especially when it comes to making things sound correct grammatically. I have to do that.”
Our understanding of this approach is that errors are objects
that exist independently of the teacher. They can and should be
found by the students. And if not, they should be pointed out by
the teacher, who invariably served as final editor. Yet, if errors do
not exist until they are identified, then students’ identification of
their own errors can be seen as a writing self-destruct mechanism.
Teachers are asking students to internalize an irrational selfcritique.
Cora, teaching at the tenth-grade level, treated editing differently: “The idea for my kids is that they are the top editors for
themselves. I don’t really have a lot to do with it. That’s a hard
thing to teach, though. Sometimes I struggle with showing them
how to look at someone else’s paper and find and correct all the
mistakes.”
Celeste felt that, for her, it was very important to have children
read their writing to her before she looked at it. “That gives me a
chance to listen, so that I don’t just zero in on the mistakes the
minute I look at it; it give me a chance to really enjoy what they’re
saying and respond to what they’ve said first.”
For the teachers from the central Atlantic state, Anna, Sophie,
and Sue, there was a built-in motivation for children to edit their
work at the end of the writing process. Children writing books
and stories in the “Students as Authors” project knew that at the
end of the process, their work would be photocopied, laminated,
and put in a ring binder to be sold as a book. “Students as Authors” project books are sold to parents, members of the community, and other children, and authors are paid $3.50 when a solely
authored and illustrated book is sold for the first time (future pro-
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ceeds go to the project to support copying and production costs;
Barksdale-Ladd, & King, 1997). As Sue stated it, “Accuracy becomes
an integral part of the whole process; it is a natural flow. They do it
and they don’t realize they’re doing it . . . because when they get
to the end, they want it to be the best that it can be.” Sophie continued: “When we’re writing in the book project, it’s not just for
school . . . the need for accuracy comes from themselves. It just
comes naturally because the students work with each other and
they want it to be a perfect finished product.”
Reading Errors
When asked about responses to student errors in reading, all of
the teachers shared some basic common beliefs. If a teacher perceived that a student’s error would interfere with the understanding of the text, the teacher felt that the error should be corrected.
They indicated that it would be good to wait until the end of a
sentence before correcting the error, but if the student did not
self-correct by that point, the teacher should step in and either
provide the correct word or help the student in identifying the
correct pronunciation of the word. Winnie had a representative
response:
Well, if, for example, they say “cot” instead of “cat,” the whole meaning of
the sentence is off, and then, if for the rest of the story they’re saying
“cot,” and it’s supposed to be “cat,” they’re not going to understand what
the story is about. I want them to get the correct word. I sort of talk them
through it and give them strategies. ‘Look at the picture. Think about
what the word might be. Look at the letters. What might it sound like?’
Then, once they get the word, I have them start the sentence again.
As Winnie alluded, the teachers had a rationale for dealing with
reading errors with immediate corrective actions. Alison explained,
When children are reading, if they aren’t reading the correct words that
are there, they’re not going to get the correct idea of what is going on.
These are not ideas from their heads. This is reading. If they’re doing
reading, they’re probably reading something that was written by someone
else, and they don’t know what that person’s thought was, so if they can’t
read those words, they’re not going to have the idea. . . . So, in reading,
I’m more critical about their correctness.
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Because word-for-word accuracy in reading was viewed as an essential aspect of comprehension, these teachers felt it was important that they encourage this type of reading accuracy. The teachers
described two methods for word identification; either they told
the student the word to avoid embarrassment or loss of train of
thought, or they asked the students to sound out the words.
Anna and Sophie were the only two teachers who had differing
opinions on this point. They were less concerned with word-toword accuracy than some of the other teachers. They felt that when
children encountered words they didn’t know, rather than telling
the children the words or asking the students to sound out the
words, the children should try to identify the words from the context. Sounding very frustrated, Anna said,
No matter how you drill it, no matter how you model it, they still think
that the only way they can figure out a word is to decode it. I mean, it takes
me forever to teach them that you could skip that word and finish the
sentence and even read the paragraph, maybe, and from context, you
may find that you don’t need that word, or you may figure it out. But they
are still so bent on figuring out the word!
Differences for More- and Less-Able Readers and Writers
We asked no interview questions about differential approaches to
reading and writing errors for more- and less-able readers and
writers; however this topic was brought up by all of the teachers.
Interestingly, approaches to dealing with reading and writing errors differed for more- and less-able readers and writers.
Better readers were more likely to be allowed to “get by” without having oral reading errors corrected, whereas reading errors
for poor readers would be corrected. Bess was representative in
saying,
I tend to let the better readers go. If the words don’t change the meaning
or something, I ignore it. I let it go, especially if they’re more fluent readers
because I know that their eyes are moving faster than their mouth is . . . But
with the ones that are struggling with reading, I give them help on figuring
out words. I think it’s more important for them than the better readers.
To the contrary, accuracy was more likely to be expected of moreable writers than of less-able writers. Errors would not be tolerated
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for good writers. For poor writers, any effort was seen as positive,
therefore errors were more likely to be accepted and not corrected.
As a follow-up question to a scenario described by a participant,
one interviewer asked, “What if that student showed you her writing and when reading it to you, read a word spelled ‘G I P’ as
‘pig’?” Winnie answered,
Well, it depends on the student. If I know that a student knows pig, I would
talk to them until they corrected it themselves. But if one of my low
children, if one of them wrote pig like that, I probably would let it go. I
would probably be impressed if a low child knew that those letters were in
pig . . . If I expected them to do the same as one of my higher children, I
would be afraid they would get totally frustrated and be turned off by the
whole process. So, that’s why I try to individualize it to their developmental
level.
Using Knowledge Gained from Student Errors to Inform Instruction
The teachers in this study all took the position that it was important to pay attention to student errors and use information gained
from student errors to inform instruction. Sixteen of these teachers were not able to think of examples of ways in which they used
knowledge of errors to inform literacy instruction. Three of the
nineteen were able to discuss their use of errors to inform instruction. Referring specifically to writing, Celeste said,
I think we can learn a whole lot from their mistakes. We’ve finally started
to learn that if we’ll just listen to the kids, they’ll tell us stuff that will help
us become able to teach them. . . . You have to know every single child,
you have to do diagnostic work on that child, you have to have observation
notes, and it takes a lot more work than just giving an assignment from
the textbook. But the pay-offs are there if we’ll just stick with it.
A second teacher, Cora, had developed a systematic method of
making use of her students’ errors in writing:
I do, kind of like a daily oral language. About twice a month I do a
diagnostic writing assessment across all of the students in each class to see
where they are, and I pull all of their miscues out, and then I put those in
a daily language story. We go over how to correct all of those particular
kinds of miscues, and I find that a lot of times, when I look at the next
diagnostic, those errors are gone. So, there is some improvement by taking
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their miscues and doing something with them. Another good thing is that
if you use their mistakes, you don’t have to worry about all of that other
stuff in the curriculum. If all they have problems with are commas, then
you can just focus on commas.
In reading, only one teacher discussed using student errors to
inform instruction. Winnie worked with each of her first-graders
individually once a week in reading, following steps in an early
intervention instruction model. As a part of this work, she took
running records with her children and used what she learned from
their miscues to direct her decisions about materials and instruction in future individual sessions.
The Construction of Inaccurate Knowledge
We asked the teachers to talk about their responses to instances in
which children constructed knowledge which was inaccurate.
Clearly, all of the teachers felt that if children constructed inaccurate knowledge, it was essential that teachers take it upon themselves
to assure that these inaccuracies were corrected. But the preferred
method of correcting factual inaccuracies was definitely not to say,
“No. You’re wrong,” and provide the corrected information.
Instead, these teachers believed they should first attempt to determine why or how the students constructed their inaccurate responses. Then, it would be most appropriate to direct the children
in conducting further research on the topic being considered, with
the hope being that the children would discover their own inaccuracy and correct it themselves. This approach to looking at inaccurately constructed knowledge was easily verbalized, and nearly a
refrain across the interviews. None of the nineteen teachers were
able to provide an example of an instance in their classrooms in
which students inaccurately constructed knowledge and an inquirybased model was used in dealing with the inaccuracy.
Discussion
This study was designed as an exploration of similarities and
differences in perceptions of teachers who self-reportedly were
making attempts toward the establishment of constructivist classroom environments. Our participants were students, friends, and
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people we considered to be reflective teachers. Thus, in examining the results, we engaged in a struggle between wanting to present
these thoughtful, hard working teachers in a favorable light and
our own critical views of the information gleaned from the interviews. That is, our awareness of power issues and the notion of
accuracy as beliefs created in a search for “truth” have been at the
forefront of our thinking in examining the data. We realize that as
professors and researchers, our perceptions of this data are representative of a level of power over the participants, and our critical
discussions of the findings and their implications have a likelihood
of being viewed as “accurate” in the eyes of these participants and
others with whom our work might be shared.
It is important as we begin our discussion that we point out that
our perceptions are, for us, the beginning of what we believe will
be a fruitful line of inquiry into error and accuracy in the classroom. We plan for more in-depth examinations of these issues,
and we expect that our perceptions on error and accuracy will
change considerably over time.
The findings demonstrated that these teachers held accuracy as
an area over which they had classroom ownership, particularly with
regard to reading errors and inaccurate constructions of knowledge. These teachers found it irritating that, when students made
oral reading errors, other children would interfere with the
teacher’s ownership of accuracy by correcting the errors before
the teacher had determined what was to be done about the errors.
When students had constructed knowledge that the teachers perceived to be inaccurate, they were solid in their conviction that
they should guide the students toward correct constructions.
With regard to teacher perceptions of student errors in writing,
it was apparent that all of these teachers had fully “bought into”
the writing process model and were confident that student errors
were to be accepted during the early stages of the writing process
and eventually corrected through peer and teacher editing. Still,
teacher ownership of accuracy was an important classroom responsibility. Teachers reported awareness of the errors in texts produced
by emerging writers, but deferred action on them to make space
for the students’ developing abilities with writing. It is also apparent that there was some ambiguity in what counted as writing error, and when to attend to these artifacts of the writing process.
In reading, these teachers were generally intolerant of errors
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and felt that they should be corrected with some immediacy. When
comprehension errors occurred, the teachers believed they should
lead students toward more correct understandings. The teachers
stated that they might wait until the end of sentence to correct an
oral reading error, but not much longer. There was a clear, unwavering, shared teacher belief that comprehension could not be
assured unless students were able to identify individual words accurately.
Reading theorists have suggested that the correction of oral reading errors by teachers may be more disruptive to comprehension
than the inability on the part of the student to identify individual
words (Allington, 1980, 1983; Johnston & Allington, 1991; Smith,
1994). The strength and solidness of this shared teacher belief
was fascinating. Most of these teachers (13) held a Master’s degree
in reading or literacy, and the remaining 6 were taking their final
course in a Master’s in Reading program. Surely, at some point,
these teachers had been exposed to the notion that the correction
of reading errors could be disruptive to comprehension. After completing our analyses, we remained curious about why these teachers were so
solid in their conviction that reading errors must be corrected,
and we recommend further research on this phenomenon.
One possible way of viewing writing and reading processes is to
see both as having flexibly definable stages in which it might be
more or less acceptable to correct errors. The writing process can
be treated as a flexible process model. The teachers in our study
agreed that student errors should be accepted during early stages
of writing such as prewriting, drafting, and revising. Only during
editing was it considered acceptable for teachers to correct student errors. The analogy to reading could posit that early encounters with the reading of a given text would be viewed in the same
light as the beginning stages of the writing process. Would it be
reasonable to assume that after a child encountered a text several
times, he or she would have reached a more advanced process
stage, and thus, it would now be acceptable for a teacher to correct reading errors? If a child had encountered a text several times,
is the likelihood high that errors in the earlier readings would
have been identified and self-corrected, thus any remaining errors might represent areas of interest for the teacher to examine
with regard to the fruitfulness of possible instruction? Perhaps so,
perhaps not—as we said, this is an exploratory study. We wonder
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how many times a child can be reasonably expected to explore the
same reading material without becoming bored with it. Continued investigations into this line of inquiry may lead to the design
of a model that will support higher levels of student ownership of
reading errors.
The findings related to teacher approaches to errors for better
and poorer readers and writers were a surprise. For better readers, oral reading errors were likely to be tolerated, and for poorer
readers, oral reading errors were more likely to be corrected (as
reported by Allington, 1980, 1983). On the other hand, for better
writers, errors were more likely to be corrected and similar errors
by poor writers were likely to be tolerated. These teachers held
similar perceptions on methods of dealing with reading and writing errors that were fully contradictory across the two processes,
but that they viewed as entirely appropriate. This discrepancy could
be explained by teachers’ perceptions of the needs of the learners. There were indications that teachers felt that poor readers
tended to make more errors and greater numbers of errors were
more likely to disrupt comprehension; therefore, there was a
greater need for these errors to be addressed. With regard to writing, the teachers may have felt that the better writers had sufficient mastery of written language expression to benefit from
correction, whereas the poor writers would benefit from experimenting with language. A further explanation for this contradiction is that these teachers were struggling in the process of moving
from more traditional to more constructivist models. While they
recognized errors as reflective of inaccurate productions, they were
inconsistent in their responses to these productions across the reading and writing processes.
This struggle to understand was also reflected in teachers’ perceptions on making use of student errors to inform instruction.
The teachers seemed strongly in agreement with the notion that
they should be paying attention to errors and collecting information on student accuracy and error. However, of the nineteen teachers, only one had a systematic method of looking at student errors
in writing, and only one had a similar method for examining student reading errors. These teachers knew that there was something important to be learned from student errors, but they hadn’t
developed methods of utilizing information gained from the study
of student errors in literacy.
Error and Accuracy
369
This also held true with teachers’ perceptions about student constructions of inaccurate information. The teachers were sure that
when students engaged in constructivist learning activities that
resulted in inaccuracies, it was essential that they step in and assure that these inaccuracies be corrected. Yet, teacher methods
for approaching the problem were described in sketchy terms, and
teachers were not able to describe classroom instances in which
these approaches had been used. The teachers felt that it would
be best that they not merely announce that students had constructed incorrect representations of knowledge. Rather, it would
be advisable to lead the students into further inquiry into the topic.
If teachers redirect students into further inquiry, isn’t it obvious
that a problem has been identified which necessitated further
study? We wondered how students could be redirected without an
implicit announcement that their constructions of knowledge were
incorrect. The problem of calling for more student research on
constructed knowledge without identifying an error is difficult to
address. Perhaps it is because of this difficulty that these teachers
were unable to provide examples of ways in which they had addressed students’ incorrect constructions of knowledge in the past.
This study involved teacher self-report in many ways. The teachers self-reported that they saw themselves as being engaged in a
process of becoming constructivist in their approaches to teaching. They self-reported their beliefs about errors in reading and
writing, and they self-reported their practices in addressing student errors. A next step, in our view, is to move beyond self-reports, and study actual teacher practices in addressing student
errors. To what degree do their self-reports match their instructional behaviors?
There are other unanswered questions that yet need to be addressed. For instance, do teachers of various age groups differ in
their professed beliefs in regard to correcting reading and writing
errors? Does the teaching approach used in the classroom affect
the respondents’ answers? Does the grade or content taught affect
the teachers’ perceptions of student errors? Do current pressures
to assure high test scores affect teachers’ perceptions of student
errors? Were the errors of poor readers, which were more likely to
be reported as receiving corrective feedback, more debilitating to
textual reading than errors of better readers? How do the perceptions of the quantity of errors affect correction? Do children who
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M. A. Barksdale-Ladd and J. R. King
make a greater number of errors receive proportionally more or
less correction, or the same amount of correction as those who
make fewer errors?
Errors are at the very heart of constructivism. It is at the point of
discovering error that it becomes possible to discount specific approximations and embrace others. Without a full understanding
of the roles of student error and accuracy within reading and writing processes, and the stance of teachers with regard to error and
accuracy, attempts at developing constructivist-based approaches
to teaching and learning may be at best misguided. We suggested
at the onset that perceptions about student errors say more about
the teachers who identify those errors than about their students,
and these results demonstrate the value in this statement. Teachers are clearly the owners of accuracy in literacy instruction and
their perceptions of approaches to addressing student error loom
over student development in literacy, although these perceptions
are contradictory and, in some cases, lack utility during classroom
interactions. Within the constructivist domain, we have made little
progress toward developing understandings of error and accuracy
that can serve a solid and meaningful function within classrooms.
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Appendix
Scenario Read by Participants Prior to Interviews
One of the underlying assumptions of whole language is that
children’s experiments with learning to read and write result in
the creation of inventions that do not correspond to standard conventions. Because of their usefulness as data about children’s learning processes and value as learning occasions for the students, there
has been considerable discussion about what to do with these nonstandard performances.
When and how, for example, is it permissible for a teacher to
“correct” children’s work? In fact, to reverse the question, when
and how is it permissible for teachers to not “correct” children’s
work? Is it different for reading than for writing?
A related trend in elementary curricula is the integrated day in
which reading and writing both occur in other subject areas. This
means that students may be writing a poem about the First Thanksgiving, or acting out an invented script on photosynthesis. But what
happens when students construct knowledge that teachers “know”
to be inaccurate? For example, what if fifth-graders maintain that
the mass of a tree comes from nutrients absorbed from the soil
(rather than carbon fixing from photosynthesis)?
To combine the previous two scenarios, tell about the thinking
processes in which you engage to sort out “process miscues” in
writing such as (a) anticipated invention with language, and (b)
knowledge-based misinformation? Are there differences in the ways
in which you think about and act upon these two kinds of writing
process miscues? Are there similarities in the ways in which you
deal with these writing process miscues? Are there differences in
the ways in which you think about and act upon these two kinds of
miscues in reading? Are there similarities in the ways in which you
deal with these reading miscues? How do you understand this stuff
when you teach; that is, what does it tell you about your students
and your teaching?” How important is it, and what can you do
with it as a teacher? Please tell about examples to illustrate your
points when you can.