Nowadays it is commonly held that it is possible to learn from errors. A key aspect is seen in an ‘error-friendly’ learning environment. This means that in school settings teachers should both allay students’ anxieties about making errors (emotional component) and enable reflection as well as support learning processes through feedback (cognitive component). Several disciplines study how teachers should best react to students’ errors; namely, Pedagogy, Psychology, Medical Science, Neurology or Engineering Sciences (e.g. Graber 2009; Mehl & Wehner 2008; Oser & Spychiger 2005). Consequently, in the field of teaching-learning-research, increasing effort has been directed towards identifying error types and the possibility of learning from errors as well as analysing how teachers’ behaviour influences students’ opportunities of learning from errors (e.g. Baumert et al. 2010; Seidel & Prenzel 2007).

These questions can be dealt with against the background of the current discussion about teacher competences. Three facets are seen as crucial: general pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and content knowledge (Shulman 1987). The broadest and most common definition of professional teacher competence portrays a complex construct which includes knowledge, beliefs and motivational orientations (Baumert & Kunter 2006). Referring to Shulman, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) can be described as a specific type of knowledge on how to transform subject-matter knowledge into teaching practice. And: PCK seems to be crucial for fostering an awareness of possible errors, misconceptions or content-related learning difficulties (van Driel & Berry 2010).

We suggest that in order to use students’ errors constructively (from a cognitive point of view), teachers need to be competent in three ways (three facets of Professional Error Competence, PEC): (1) They have to know about possible errors and be able to identify them in classroom interaction. (2) After having recognised the error, teachers must treat it ‘adequately’. For this they have to know about various alternatives of action (e.g. providing adequate feedback). (3) Teachers should be prepared to become involved in students errors even if there are time constraints and they should have a positive view on errors, seeing them as learning opportunities.

Our current project focuses on how teachers develop these competences (Seifried & Wuttke 2010) in the course of their training and professional life. We are using a combined cross-sectional longitudinal design to test teachers at several stages of their professional development. As a specific characteristic of the German teacher educational system, prospective teachers have to complete a Master’s degree at university, and then successfully complete a practical training of about 1.5 to 2 years before they begin teaching. Therefore, corresponding development processes during professionalization will be considered for four groups: bachelor’s and master’s students, pre-service teachers and professional teachers. In this paper we will focus on the first facet of PEC, namely the knowledge of domain specific errors.

Research Questions

1)    1) What domain-specific knowledge about student errors do the participants have and are there differences between the groups?

2)  2)    How do they perceive their own knowledge and does this perception relate to actual performance?

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