RUME 27
2025
Alexandria, Virginia
Is it a Simple Mistake?: Tutors’ Perceptions of Student Errors
Page: 1264
Undergraduate math tutors frequently interact with students who are currently at a point of impasse or who have experienced failure and are seeking help. This affords tutors the opportunity to impact students’ understanding of mathematics as well as redirect their study efforts. Helping students accurately classify their mistakes is a worthwhile effort, but is challenging and requires training and support. However, to provide this training for tutors, we need to know how tutors view student errors. This report details preliminary results from a survey given to current tutors, asking them to classify authentic student mistakes on a test as “simple” or “not simple.” We discuss multiple reasons tutors give for their classifications, including some which stand in contrast to those we might use as researchers.