ABSTRACT
It is clear that what matters most to students about being wrong is how they feel and what they think about when they find out that their answers are incorrect. These reactions frame the emotional and cognitive responses and influence subsequent behavior, and these responses can be a positive or negative influence on learning and motivation. This chapter reviews some studies that have addressed this issue and other investigations that have examined closely related achievement-oriented situations to frame a model of being wrong. The model suggests a way to organize the dynamics of the process to show implications for instruction and assessment. Each assessment event is somewhat, if not extremely, different. These dynamics lead to three separate factors that influence subsequent effort, preparation, engagement, and reaction to the assessment, results, and feedback: stable traits, state characteristics, and assessment event characteristics. The chapter examines each to see how they influence student perceptions of assessment and emotional, as well as cognitive, outcomes.
