Mistakes are good- learning from mistakes is sometimes better than getting it right

I love it when my students make mistakes. That probably seems odd, as most instructors want students to be “good” and making mistakes is clearly not good. Don’t get me wrong, I want my students to end up being good divers. But that’s the outcome. To get to the outcome, we have to follow a process and this is where I like my students to make mistakes.

Let’s look first at what a mistake is. It’s an error, made when you’ve done the wrong thing, thinking it’s the right thing. It will most probably result in the outcome not being as expected. It’s probably not intentional, and sometimes not even noticed by the person who made the mistake, or by others around them. It may be caused because they misunderstand what they’re supposed to do, don’t have enough knowledge, experience or skill to know what to do or are able to do, they’re overloaded, or because they did what they were told to do but what they were told was wrong. As an instructor I always hope it’s not the first or last option but of course that does happen. In that case when we debrief, that's the point where I can take responsibility for it, apologise and work out why I gave an incorrect or unclear instruction to try and prevent it from happening again. Debriefs are essential to understanding why mistakes happen on all sides.

I love it when students make mistakes because they often learn more from a mistake than they do from doing it right. When a mistake is made, the first step is to correct it. That may need to be done immediately (in the case of putting a mask on upside down or not recovering a lost regulator) or allowing the student a chance to correct it themselves (such as buoyancy control or starting to swim in the wrong direction), depending on the student's level and the severity of the mistake. The more experienced the student, the longer the time they get to correct a mistake. If it’s a new skill the student needs to be corrected quickly; the rule of primacy is that students tend to remember the first things they learn, so if they do it right (or are corrected quickly) the first time, that way of doing it will cement itself in their brain. But with more advanced students, that is those who know the correct way of doing things already, allowing them to make mistakes gives them a possibility to problem solve. Problem solving promotes critical thinking, giving the student a chance to work out for themselves that something is not right, and figure out how to correct it. Even if the student doesn’t manage to correct it themselves, it still gives a great talking point when we debrief. Have you ever noticed how you tend to remember things that go wrong more than things that go right? The same thing happens here. I’ve had a couple of students who after donating their long hose to an out-of-gas buddy have happily continued swimming along on the dive, and not thumbed it. There was one who after about 2 minutes suddenly looked at their buddy, eyes wide, and stuck their thumb up. They caught my eye, shook their head and then put it in their hands. After the dive we discussed their train of thought. They explained that once they’d donated gas they considered the problem to be over, so it was ok to continue. It had taken them the extra few minutes of thinking through the next steps before they realised that they needed to get out of there. In the years since this happened they (and their buddy) have referred to it several times; it’s a lesson they won’t forget! That’s the thing with mistakes, the bigger it is, the more memorable it is.

Of course, not every mistake is quite so memorable. In fact, often some aren’t even noticed by me or the student. This is why debriefs are so important. In a debrief the first step is to establish psychological safety; make sure everyone knows it’s ok to make mistakes, and discuss them honestly. We do this by having the leader of the debrief talk about a mistake they made. By demonstrating their own vulnerability they show that it’s ok for everyone else to do the same. If psychological safety exists, it’s easier for students to admit to their mistakes, even ones that the instructor may not have noticed. A traditional debrief often consists of having the instructor list all the things that the student did wrong. That led to a new student of mine once saying “here comes the roasting!” when we sat down to start the first debrief, then being surprised when that didn’t happen. Rather than that, the student tells the instructor what went well, as well as what they think they need to improve. This approach normally brings out far more, as it covers all the things the instructor doesn’t see, things that the student experienced or felt. Of course, anything that they don’t mention that’s important can be added in later but the majority of problems normally end up being covered. Best of all, because the student is explaining what they feel went wrong, they have to critically think in order to explain why it happened, and what they will change in order to prevent it from happening again. So once again, the mistake forces them to think more, which drives it into their memory.

Summary

Critical thinking helps students learn, and mistakes force them to do this. The most useful way to get students to remember and learn from their mistakes is by holding an effective debrief, getting them to recall what happened, how it made sense to them and what they will do differently next time. Read here for more information about the DEBrIEF model.

Jenny is a full-time technical diving instructor and safety diver. Prior to diving, she worked in outdoor education for 10 years teaching rock climbing, white water kayaking and canoeing, sailing, skiing, caving and cycling, among other sports. Her interest in team development started with outdoor education, using it as a tool to help people learn more about communication, planning and teamwork.

Since 2009 she has lived in Dahab, Egypt teaching SCUBA diving. She is now a technical instructor trainer for TDI, advanced trimix instructor, advanced mixed gas CCR diver and helitrox CCR instructor.

Jenny has supported a number of deep dives as part of H2O divers dive team and works as a dive supervisor and safety diver in the media industry.

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