The exploration of the nature (respectively classification, genesis or incidence), the awareness, the handling and the communication of errors and mistakes is an important challenge in the context of an increasing complexity of the today’s working and living environments. Errors and mistakes are in this context not only a immediate feature of human action. Rather they can be described as the substructure for new and innovative possibilities of action. This fact is apparently opposed to a social atmosphere, in which errors and mistakes are regarded as a problematic phenomenon which is to be avoided (cf. Osten 2006).

The previous exploration of errors/mistakes in the context of human acting is focused – apart from a general scientific definition and classification (from a psychological view, cf. Edelstein 2008) – at two fields of research: (1) The exploration of emergence, causes, consequences and prevention strategies of errors and mistakes in the context of mechanical or technologically shaped working environments with a high responsibility like airplane cockpits or atomic power plants (cf. Badke-Schaub et al. 2008). (2) The exploration of the utilization of errors and mistakes in individual, social and organisational processes of learning (cf. Oser/Spychiger 2005).

A research approach in the previous exploration of errors/mistakes is needed, which investigate at the field of errors/mistakes in the context of professional educational/teaching acting; and this means the acting of the professional agents itself and not of their clients.

This is because of the fact that (1) the terms ‘error’ and ‘mistake’ are not fundamentally embodied in the field of educational and/or teaching acting (especially in the context of a professionalization theory) and that (2) the nature, the emergence, the awareness as well as a diagnosis of possible consequences of these errors and mistakes is not as simply allocatable as in technologically shaped action contexts. Besides in the educational/teaching context it is more complicated to evaluate and define educational errors/mistakes clearly as an 'incorrect' acting, because their consequences often are not visible immediately .

Accordingly it is difficult to discover errors and mistakes in educational and/or teaching action processes, to investigate their handling and communicating as well as to find their following consequences.

In my presentation I want to show the possibilities and the limits of an exploration at the field of errors/mistakes in processes of educational and/or teaching acting. This includes following aspects: (1) The analysis of previous outcomes of the ‘error and mistake research’ and the examination of those transferability on educational/teaching action processes; (2) The representation of the nature of errors, mistakes and their subforms in educational/teaching action processes as well as the different error-/mistake-conceptions of the teachers and/or educators itself. (3) The description, in which way teachers and/or educators perceive theirs errors and mistakes, how they deal (management) with them and how they communicate about errors/mistakes among themselves and outward; briefly speaking: an typical pedagogical error-/mistake-culture is to be outlined.

The theoretical statements are supported by an empirical study (questionnaire), which was accomplished with the staff of educational institutions (schools, kindergartens, consulting and welfare institutions) and students of educational/teaching studies in Saxony (Germany).

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