2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

When enacting active learning pedagogies such as problem-based learning or responsive teaching, instructors require students to make mistakes and admit to and grapple through confusion. Students are often reported to be resistant to active learning, and it is important for instructors to develop epistemic empathy for their students’ affective responses to confusion in the classroom. In this work, I report on two class sessions of a higher-level engineering elective in which I elicited and responded to student confusion in one class session, and then in the next, which I initially described as a “math disaster,” made technical mistakes and became confused myself. Through reflective practice on these experiences with confusion, I developed heightened empathy with students who are uncomfortable making mistakes in class, learned to use my own mistakes to model engineering practices, and re-framed my perspective on what it means to be a “good” engineering instructor. This work illustrates the benefits of incorporating reflective practice into the professional development of engineering instructors.