Mistake-handling Activities in the Mathematics Classroom

The handling of mistakes in the mathematics classroom is an area in which only little research is done so far. In mathematics education there are, in fact, several investigations about students’ mistakes from a diagnostic perspective, but hardly any studies on the question how teachers react in concrete mathematics lessons. In this article theoretical aspects and results of different video studies are summarized. Moreover, a student survey based on a questionnaire is presented in detail. The findings indicate that particularly low achieving students are not aware of the learning opportunities within mistake situations.