From Oops to Aha: Portraits of Learning from Mistakes in Kindergarten

From Oops to Aha pulls back the curtain on learning from mistakes in four public school Kindergarten classrooms: urban, charter, Montessori, and suburban. With each chapter, the reader is transported directly into the daily lives of teachers and their students. The portraits offer poignantly-detailed, moment-by-moment illustrations of how teachers respond to mistakes and interact with students. At the micro-level, this perspective reveals how teachers’ beliefs, intentions, and instructional practices play out in context during daily life in the classroom. By juxtaposing the true stories of the lives of Kindergarten teachers and children, Donaldson makes plain that even in this very early grade, there is a wide and striking range of children’s interpersonal and learning experiences in school. All Kindergarten classrooms are not the same; the nuanced way teachers respond to mistakes in the moment is impacted by access to resources and by policies enacted at a broader level. This book will inform and inspire readers to reexamine preconceived notions of mistakes, feedback, and early childhood learning and teaching, and to reconsider their impact on educational equity.