Abstract
The error climate in the classroom captures the extent to which errors are positively perceived and treated as constructive learning opportunities by teachers and students. It has been conceptualized as comprising eight subdimensions organized under a single second-order factor among secondary school students (Steuer et al., 2013). However, this structure has not yet been investigated in younger students. Consequently, we examined the error climate’s structure in elementary school classrooms while additionally proposing a novel and more differentiated second-order structure distinguishing between emotional and instructional support following errors. Among 2,628 elementary school students from 187 classrooms across two domains (maths and German), multilevel multigroup confirmatory factor analyses at the individual and classroom level were conducted. Results revealed a multifaceted error climate perception already in elementary school, with eight subdimensions loading onto the two proposed second-order factors. These, in turn, were also positively related to students’ individual adaptive reactions to errors.