Perceived error climate in primary school classrooms: A multidimensional perspective

The way teachers address errors in the classroom plays a crucial role in shaping how students experience their errors, regulate their learning processes, and ultimately learn from them. To capture these dynamics, the concept of the perceived error climate has been introduced, describing the extent to which errors are positively perceived and treated as constructive learning opportunities by teachers and students. Prior research with secondary school students conceptualized the error climate as comprising eight subdimensions organized under a single higher-order factor (Steuer et al., 2013). However, this structure has not yet been confirmed in younger students, and a single second-order factor may not provide a sufficiently differentiated representation of the construct. To address these deficits, we examined the structure of the perceived error climate in primary school classrooms and proposed a novel second-order structure distinguishing between emotional and instructional support following errors. The study drew on a sample of N = 2,628 third- and fourth-grade students from 187 classrooms across two domains (maths and German as a first language). Using multilevel multigroup confirmatory factor analyses, we examined the structure of the perceived error climate at both the individual and the classroom level. Results supported the proposed structure of eight subdimensions loading onto the two second-order factors of emotional and instructional support following errors. These second-order factors were positively related to students’ individual adaptive affective-motivational and adaptive action-related reactions to errors, respectively. Overall, the findings demonstrate that primary school students already perceive the error climate as a multifaceted classroom feature and that these distinctions are relevant for students’ engagement with their own errors.