ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the critical but largely unrecognized part of classroom climate that involves the nature of assessment and the portion of the assessment climate related to how students perceive, think about, and react to being wrong, making mistakes, and making errors. An approach for understanding the nature of the classroom assessment environment is to examine students' perceptions of assessment that may suggest components of the climate. Another finding from studies of students' perceptions is that they are keenly tuned in to the difficulty of the tests and other assessments. The "being-wrong" part of the assessment climate in the classroom is concerned with what students expect when they are wrong or make mistakes and what norms have been established that influence students' reactions to errors. A significant influence on the establishment of an error climate of the classroom is how teachers respond to students, day in and day out, when they make mistakes or are wrong.
