What's the Nicest Way to Tell Students They're Wrong?

[Cheerful]

Actually, walking on eggshells is good for your glissades if you're doing ballet...

;--}

M.

Thank you for saying "Actually." : >

[mamselle]

You're welcome....

In fact, though, this topic is pertinent to something that happened with a student of mine last night.

He's been working a veryveryvery long time on a difficult piece of music, and it's somewhere between "let's call it a day," and "If you just did these three or four things consistently, it would be reaalllyy good..."

It seems as if he's just not taking in the corrections (which are in some cases right in the music; in others, it's a matter of knowing certain traditional expectations about how it's to be played. And if, once he CAN play it that way, he wants to play it a different way, that's fine with me, and I've told him so.)

Maybe it was the first week back in school and he was tired; it just didn't seem as if the oft-repeated requests for the three-or-four-things were important to him. So afterwards, I did tell him that he's made good progress with it, but I'm getting frustrated with repeating those corrections and not having him seem to take them in.

Two, he immediately said, were not in the music (they are, and I showed him where. Again.) The third, I've asked for from the first day he started doing the piece, a measure or two at a time. Very occasionally, they show up, but most of the time, not. And it's the most important, interpretively--if anyone heard him play it without them, they'd wonder (here's my pride, I know) who his teacher was and why they hadn't taught him to do those things.

And I've explained that: my 90-year old teacher [claimed to have been*] a pupil of the 90-year-old pupil of the composer, and that's what she taught me, and I take it for truth.

So I left it that we needed to think more about that, and decide if he needed to take some time away from that piece, or whatever.

Trouble is, he really really really does care about his music overall, and I don't want to make him feel bad about it, but he does need to take those corrections on board and do something with them.

So--we'll see.

But I thought of this thread as I was trying to figure out what to say to him.

M.


*it's just possible...

[Clarino1]

I can relate to this, sort of.  Many years ago, when my youngest son was a student at one of the top music schools in the country (where I got my Master's degree back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth) we were walking down the hall in the school of music and heard a student on my instrument practicing.  It was not very good, and, although I didn't say anything, I must have grimaced, because my son looked at me and said, "Dad, some of these guys have never been told "You suck--go home!""  I think sometimes that we need to tell students "You suck--go home!" for their own good.

[mamselle]

Welll... if that happens we may lose some valuable players, too.

One of my children's dance choir members, 25 years ago, was starting out on cello. She was really pretty bad--it's harder to play a non-fretted instrument because only your sense of pitch guides the placement of your hands, and she didn't, to hear her, seem to have any really good sense of pitch, whether absolute or relative.

I nearly said something to her mom about it, but for some reason held my peace.

I'm glad I did.

At her father's memorial service last fall, she played beautifully.

Her training at Julliard had stood her in good stead.

M.

[Caracal]

You're welcome....

In fact, though, this topic is pertinent to something that happened with a student of mine last night.

He's been working a veryveryvery long time on a difficult piece of music, and it's somewhere between "let's call it a day," and "If you just did these three or four things consistently, it would be reaalllyy good..."

It seems as if he's just not taking in the corrections (which are in some cases right in the music; in others, it's a matter of knowing certain traditional expectations about how it's to be played. And if, once he CAN play it that way, he wants to play it a different way, that's fine with me, and I've told him so.)

Maybe it was the first week back in school and he was tired; it just didn't seem as if the oft-repeated requests for the three-or-four-things were important to him. So afterwards, I did tell him that he's made good progress with it, but I'm getting frustrated with repeating those corrections and not having him seem to take them in.

Two, he immediately said, were not in the music (they are, and I showed him where. Again.) The third, I've asked for from the first day he started doing the piece, a measure or two at a time. Very occasionally, they show up, but most of the time, not. And it's the most important, interpretively--if anyone heard him play it without them, they'd wonder (here's my pride, I know) who his teacher was and why they hadn't taught him to do those things.

And I've explained that: my 90-year old teacher [claimed to have been*] a pupil of the 90-year-old pupil of the composer, and that's what she taught me, and I take it for truth.

So I left it that we needed to think more about that, and decide if he needed to take some time away from that piece, or whatever.

Trouble is, he really really really does care about his music overall, and I don't want to make him feel bad about it, but he does need to take those corrections on board and do something with them.

So--we'll see.

But I thought of this thread as I was trying to figure out what to say to him.

M.


*it's just possible...

My advisor is a very nice man who gave a lot of free rein to his grad students. When I was sending chapter drafts of my dissertation to him, my policy was that in the rare cases where I didn't agree with one of his edits, I just left it in for the next draft. (This was for small stuff, like a quote or anecdote he thought was unnecessary.) If he ignored it next time, I took that as tacit acceptance that it was just a question of stylistic preference. If he marked it again, I heard that as "no seriously, change this" and made the change for the next draft. Part of being a grad student is understanding that your advisor usually knows better and even if you really think they are wrong, they are still in charge

[smallcleanrat]

I can relate to this, sort of.  Many years ago, when my youngest son was a student at one of the top music schools in the country (where I got my Master's degree back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth) we were walking down the hall in the school of music and heard a student on my instrument practicing.  It was not very good, and, although I didn't say anything, I must have grimaced, because my son looked at me and said, "Dad, some of these guys have never been told "You suck--go home!""  I think sometimes that we need to tell students "You suck--go home!" for their own good.

You said this was at one of the top music schools in the country. Doesn't this mean that the student you overheard practicing was admitted to one of the top music schools in the country? Wouldn't that mean that the school saw potential in this student?

Maybe it wasn't that student's primary instrument; perhaps they had only recently taken it up. I've met lots of music school graduates who were required to learn some basics of other instruments as part of their studies.

[Clarino1]

Although music ed students do have to learn the basics of many of the instruments, this person was working on something that was beyond the basic level.  He or she was playing in such a way as to show that they had no understanding of the basics of the instrument, and since the school is/was severely limited in the number of these players they can take, I was surprised at the low level of attainment.  I DO think we owe our students an honest assessment of their abilities, particularly in a field where they will have to make their living with that ability.

[ergative]

Although music ed students do have to learn the basics of many of the instruments, this person was working on something that was beyond the basic level.  He or she was playing in such a way as to show that they had no understanding of the basics of the instrument, and since the school is/was severely limited in the number of these players they can take, I was surprised at the low level of attainment.  I DO think we owe our students an honest assessment of their abilities, particularly in a field where they will have to make their living with that ability.

I absolutely acknowledge that it's possible that this was an uber-privileged rich kid whose family were alumni donors or something. We'll never know for sure. It's possible.

But also, maybe s/he was just starting a new instrument and wanted to jump ahead a bit, in the privacy of a practice room.

One of my skills is calligraphy. I've been doing it for two decades now, and I've seen a lot of beginner work that is, quite frankly, terrible. One common characteristic is that beginners learn a few tricks and then start writing out whole poems or quotes when they clearly haven't mastered the basic strokes or letterforms, let alone interletter and interword spacing, or page composition. But so what? It's hard to keep up motivation if you limit yourself to mastering the basics before you move on to something more challenging.

As educators, I think we have to be careful about gatekeeping. If someone wants to learn something, when should we tell them 'you suck; go home'? I can think of two reasons:

1. The student is so terrible at it that they will be dangerous if they are allowed to complete the process. This is clearly not the case with a music student, but it would be very relevant to, e.g., nurses who can't calculate proportions and medication dosages properly). However, if there are appropriate credentialling tests, then the student will eventually hit a hard barrier, albeit only after sucking up teaching resources that could have gone to someone else. Which brings me to the second point.

2. There is a limit on the learning resources, and by focusing them on a terrible student, we are depriving more able students from the opportunity to benefit. And I'm sure we've all experienced how a struggling student in a course can suck up an enormous amount of time and energy, while the more able students cruise along with little input from us beyond the baseline classroom teaching.

If 1 and 2 don't apply, then I think we as educators have a responsibility to educate. If a student wants to learn to play the bassoon, or write copperplate, or learn organic chemistry, even if they're terrible at it, then we should think carefully about why we want to deny them that opportunity.

To emphasize: I'm not saying there aren't reasons to deny opportunities. But I do think that 'you suck' is not, in itself, sufficient.

[smallcleanrat]

Although music ed students do have to learn the basics of many of the instruments, this person was working on something that was beyond the basic level.  He or she was playing in such a way as to show that they had no understanding of the basics of the instrument, and since the school is/was severely limited in the number of these players they can take, I was surprised at the low level of attainment.  I DO think we owe our students an honest assessment of their abilities, particularly in a field where they will have to make their living with that ability.

I had a thought similar to ergative's. Lots of novices tackle tasks they aren't yet ready for...

But to address your larger point, I agree with providing an honest assessment, but I think it is important to distinguish facts from speculation. You would be giving them facts if by "You suck! Go home," you are telling them something like "This is the skill level you are currently displaying compared to the skill level of the average student in this department. This is the level of competitiveness you can expect to face if you continue. To catch up/graduate/survive as a professional you would need to [...]."

But if you are actually saying "You do not have the innate potential to ever be a successful professional in this field," I would argue this is heading into the realm of speculation. Like mamselle said, an unpromising beginning doesn't always mean an unsuccessful outcome. You can know what abilities a person is currently demonstrating, but can you really know with certainty what abilities this person is capable of attaining? If not, then stating authoritatively that a student will never be successful in the field could be considered a form of dishonesty.

If it is rare for someone to be successful starting from so far behind, that can be explained to a student. But there are lots of people out there who were told "You will never..." who went on to do the "impossible" anyway.

Regarding the points ergative raises, I see their importance, but I thought that's what academic standards and certification exams were for. If a student fails to demonstrate sufficient skill, knowledge, or progress they are not allowed to continue in the program (or gain the professional certification). Again, this would be based on performance, not specifically a judgment on possibility and potential. At least, this is how it would happen in the ideal world, I guess; I know incompetent people still slither through the cracks sometimes.

Perhaps this would simply be considered the formalized version of "You suck. Go home."

[smallcleanrat]

I'm thinking over some of my experiences TA-ing for this course, and I'm still not sure how best to handle students who are so wrong I'm utterly baffled.

As polly_mer mentioned on page 1 of this thread, many students find reading a scientific paper exceptionally difficult. Many students seemed to have trouble extracting the main ideas even from the abstract.

Students were never penalized for wrong answers; the discussions were designed to be low stakes so students could focus more an analyzing the literature rather than fretting about points. This did lead to many students complaining in the evals that the discussions were useless, as they did not have a large impact on grades. ("I don't see the purpose of making us read these boring papers that don't even show up on the exams.")

At the beginning of each discussion, I would do a brief powerpoint presentation reviewing relevant concepts from the lectures and explaining terms and methods used in the paper. Students were required to have read the entire paper before discussion; prior to the discussion section they could ask for help in office hours or through the forum on the course website. During their groupwork, I would walk from group to group answering questions. Sometimes a group would tell me they didn't understand a single thing; I was fine with walking them through it step-by-step. The most clueless groups always told me they were fine, and waved away any help.

After the first discussion section, when I realized they needed more guidance I started including more aids to help them with the groupwork. As the term went on, I added more and more to these guides until it got to a point where the only way I could have imagined making it easier would be to write them a script they could read out word-for-word during the presentation.

At the beginning of group work, I would hand out specific questions for each group to help guide them to the main ideas and keep them from getting bogged down in the technical details. I even started adding where in the paper to find the answers (e.g. "1st paragraph of the 2nd page"), and telling them which paragraphs to skip (to avoid some of the more technical stuff confusing them). I even started crafting the questions to use exact wording from the paper (e.g. "What did the results of Experiment 3 cause the authors to question?", paper says, "The results of Experiment 3 caused us to question...") When a student still can't pick out the correct answer even when given the page, paragraph number, and the exact wording of half the relevant sentence...what's going on?

Two examples of exchanges with students I'm sure I could have handled better, but I'm not sure how.

Me: Ok, let's start the discussion. Which group is handling the Introduction?
Group: That's us!
Me: Cool; go for it!
Group: [summarizes the results and conclusions]
Me: Ok...good summary. Um...sorry, just want to double-check. Was your group assigned to do the Intro? [Not a sarcastic question. I'm honestly thinking I made a mistake]
Group: Yup!
Me: Ah...did you get a chance to look at the sheet of questions I gave you earlier? [questions are very specific to the Intro; e.g. "What previous findings published by this lab led to the main hypothesis in this study?"]
Group: [looks down at sheet of questions; looks back at me; says nothing]
Me: All right, no worries! Just something to remember for next time, the information we want to get from the Introduction would be things like what previous research in the field inspired/informed this study, whether there are competing hypotheses to explain a certain phenomenon, things like that. That kind of thing is always covered in the very first section of the paper after the abstract and before the results or methods.
Rest of Class: [starts to titter]
Group: [looks awkward; still says nothing]
Me: [moves on to next group]

This was middle of the term (and the third term of a course series!); the fact that the Introduction introduces the paper shouldn't have been news to them...

Another (one of the interactions my student evaluator labeled condescending):

[Imagine we are discussing a paper on the life cycle of North American songbirds]

Student: So, based on the results of Experiment 5, the authors concluded that dolphin populations in the South Pacific are increasing.
Me: Dolphins? hmm...I don't quite follow. Would you mind backing up a few steps and walking us through the experiment to the conclusion?
Student: [silence; blank stare]
Me: Um...do you recall which part of the paper talks about the dolphins? I don't remember that part, maybe I missed it... [Thinking maybe the authors referenced another study to draw parallels...or something...]
Student: [silence; blank stare]
Me: Ok, so [summarizes Experiment 5 method and results] and that led the authors to conclude...?
Student: [silence; eyes begin to narrow]
Me: [finishes explanation of Experiment 5 and moves on]

Upon rereading this student's TA eval comment, I see he also complained that I need to stop having the students do my job by "making them do all the teaching." It also reads less like an opinion, and more like an evaluation written by a supervisor: "I'm not saying she shouldn't get another chance. She has potential. But she needs to be more invested in student learning."

[mamselle]

Whoa!!!

You're doing 'way too much to help them if that's what's happening.

No wonder you're exhausted.

Others can comment on how to dial this back, but...what was that thread about not only chewing their food but digesting it for them?

I mean, your commentary to me sounds excellent.  You're doing everything you can to get them to work. 

But they've re-uploaded all the course expectations back onto you. I think it's called "managing (or delegating) upwards."

They think "points on the exam" are the only proof of learning, they haven't taken onboard the idea that learning a principle of work and applying it is the point.

They sound like conditioned animals that only learn in order to get out of the maze, instead of animated, cognizant human beings.

You're giving so generously of yourself that they've both come to expect it, and feel entitled to demand more.

Finding a way to re-balance things might be hard in a class that's already in progress, but it seems to me you have to.

They're doing their best to get out of doing any work at all, and taking advantage of all your kind impulses and efforts to help them.

In a dance class, I'd be saying, "I can teach you how to do plie's, but I can't do them for you."

Not sure what one says here, but maybe others can comment.

M.

[Puget]

I'm not sure the amount of scaffolding per se is the problem-- they may really need it, depending on their year and the type of students you have.

This is not at all meant as criticism-- learning to teach is hard, and teaching students to read scientific journal articles is super hard, so I'm just passing on some things I've learned by teaching seminars where students have to read journal articles--

I can see however, how your responses as described here could come across not as you intend. I think when you say things like

Me: Um...do you recall which part of the paper talks about the dolphins? I don't remember that part, maybe I missed it... [Thinking maybe the authors referenced another study to draw parallels...or something...]

students are likely to hear that either as you being confused and lacking confidence or as condescending, neither of which students like. Things you can try instead include opening it up to the rest of the class (there are generally at least a few students who can make the correction), or directly modeling how to find the right answer (e.g., "OK, let's re-read that section together and see-- could someone please read aloud [paragraph]?"

I also would not let them get away with not using the scaffolding you are providing-- the way you've described it, they can just not do the work and you "reward" them for it by then supplying the answers for them. Instead of just offering to help as you circulate, I'd ask to see their progress so far on the scaffolding sheets-- that way you can quickly re-direct them if they are off course. You could also structure it more so for example you have them let you know when they've answered the first X questions, and then you come over and discuss their answers with them so they have a chance to correct errors before coming back to the full class. This also will feel a lot better to them than being corrected in front of everyone.

The main problem though seems to be lack of buy-in from the students-- they don't understand why they are doing this or what they are supposed to get out of it. Next time, starting the semester out with a discussion about that might help. As the TA you probably have no control over this, but having reading responses due before class (with points attached), and having some test questions on them would also massively help.

[smallcleanrat]

I can see however, how your responses as described here could come across not as you intend. I think when you say things like

Me: Um...do you recall which part of the paper talks about the dolphins? I don't remember that part, maybe I missed it... [Thinking maybe the authors referenced another study to draw parallels...or something...]

students are likely to hear that either as you being confused and lacking confidence or as condescending, neither of which students like. Things you can try instead include opening it up to the rest of the class (there are generally at least a few students who can make the correction), or directly modeling how to find the right answer (e.g., "OK, let's re-read that section together and see-- could someone please read aloud [paragraph]?"

Thanks, Puget.

I can believe things can come across in a different way than I intend. I'm not the best at face-to-face interaction; I know I can rub people the wrong way unintentionally. But I'm still struggling to imagine how best to change my response.

I was definitely confused because neither dolphins nor the South Pacific was mentioned anywhere in the paper, so I was struggling to think how to respond. Is it the pauses that could potentially come across as condescending? Or is it saying I didn't remember that being in the paper? The papers can often be quite dense, so I don't remember every detail; I've certainly been a student in discussion sections in which the professor says "Was that in there? Where? I don't remember...page six, you say? Oh, I see. Ok." I was trying to give the student a chance to explain. I still have no idea how he got "dolphins" because he refused to say anything.

If I were to toss the question to the rest of the students or ask someone to read the section aloud so we could go through it as a class, what do I say to preface this? If the student says "Dolphins!", wouldn't it be rude for me to immediately say, "Ok, does anyone else have a different idea?" or "Ok, let's re-read that section..." Isn't that being too dismissive of the original student's answer; telling them they are wrong without bothering to hear more about their perspective? Hegemony and others on this thread suggested asking the student to reference a page number and point to a specific part of the text that informed their answer so you can try to understand their thought process. That's what I meant to do here. Should I have worded it differently?

I also would not let them get away with not using the scaffolding you are providing-- the way you've described it, they can just not do the work and you "reward" them for it by then supplying the answers for them. Instead of just offering to help as you circulate, I'd ask to see their progress so far on the scaffolding sheets-- that way you can quickly re-direct them if they are off course. You could also structure it more so for example you have them let you know when they've answered the first X questions, and then you come over and discuss their answers with them so they have a chance to correct errors before coming back to the full class. This also will feel a lot better to them than being corrected in front of everyone.

This would probably take some trial and error. Would you recommend I instruct the groups to write down their answers so I can come by and check progress? Even the groups that answer every question perfectly don't write down their answers in a legible, outline form that would allow me to quickly scan it to see if they are on the right track. They tend to just talk it out and scratch key words and acronyms onto the question sheet as reminders. I worry asking them to write the answers to the scaffold questions would slow them down. I could ask them to verbally tell me what they've come up with so far, but I worry doing this for every group would eat into discussion time.

And if it doesn't feel good to be corrected in front of everyone, how is it a reward for a group that didn't do the work? What's weird about that first group is that they did more work summarizing all the conclusions than they would have done answering the questions I set them about the introduction. This was not at all our first discussion section. The questions on the sheet I give them are always the same questions I ask them to answer when it comes time to present. They did fine just the week before. Again, I still have no idea what happened here since they didn't explain anything.

If I do try to set a group on the right track during the group-work, what do I do if they just stare blankly at me? Do I try to get them to engage, or do I just explain whatever they refuse to answer for themselves? And if a group is having trouble answering a gimme question like "What did the results of Experiment 3 cause the authors to question? (see page 3, paragraph 2)," how can I point them to page 3, paragraph 2 containing the sentence, "The results of Experiment 3 caused us to question..." without seeming to patronize them?

The main problem though seems to be lack of buy-in from the students-- they don't understand why they are doing this or what they are supposed to get out of it. Next time, starting the semester out with a discussion about that might help. As the TA you probably have no control over this, but having reading responses due before class (with points attached), and having some test questions on them would also massively help.

The educational purpose of the discussions were explained in the syllabus, by the professor during the first lecture (a 20-minute explanation of the importance of being able to read a scientific paper and general guidelines on key questions to ask as you read), and by me during the first discussion. Every discussion section began with a 5-minute quiz. Each TA wrote questions for their own sections (pre-approved by the professor). These were designed to be easy. The prof said, "Any student who has done even a very superficial reading of the paper should be able to score 100%."

Everything was multiple choice or true-false. Some questions were dead easy (e.g. "What animal was used in these experiments?" when the paper uses the word "mice" about 50 times and "mouse" is in the title of the paper). Most could be answered without reading beyond the abstract. Early in the term, there were a lot of 100% scores. Less and less so as the term went on; I think some students just stopped bothering to read the papers before section.

Fortunately, the students in my examples were the minority. I'd say about 20% didn't really need the scaffolding to recognize the main ideas; they only needed help with the methods and more technical concepts. ~60% did need some degree of scaffolding and their answers were markedly better and more confident with the guidance. They also were willing to ask for help when confused, and were engaged and responsive when I broke down the problem into smaller, simpler questions.

The remaining 20% seemed to remain clueless no matter how much scaffolding was provided, and clammed up when I tried to ask them questions to see where they were in their understanding. When I have no idea how they arrived at their answer and they don't want to answer any further questions, I don't really know what to say. They tend to be the same students rolling their eyes when I ask for phones to be put away (for the second or third time) when it's time for the quiz. The same students who sigh while looking at their watches. The same students who would try to slip out early after taking the quiz (which the TAs also use to track attendance), until I started using a sign-out sheet for the end of class. I don't know how much of this is due to me and how much is due to the students (i.e. would they behave this way with a different instructor?)

[spork]

[. . . ]

The remaining 20% seemed to remain clueless no matter how much scaffolding was provided, and clammed up when I tried to ask them questions to see where they were in their understanding. When I have no idea how they arrived at their answer and they don't want to answer any further questions, I don't really know what to say. They tend to be the same students rolling their eyes when I ask for phones to be put away (for the second or third time) when it's time for the quiz. The same students who sigh while looking at their watches. The same students who would try to slip out early after taking the quiz (which the TAs also use to track attendance), until I started using a sign-out sheet for the end of class. I don't know how much of this is due to me and how much is due to the students (i.e. would they behave this way with a different instructor?)

I am hoping that the course is structured in a way that makes it apparent to these students that they are going to fail, because if they are not doing the work, then that's what should happen. Triage is a thing in undergraduate education; many students lack the preparation or will to learn at the college level. However, if whatever happens in class is seen as irrelevant to their final grades, students aren't going to do it.

[Puget]

I was definitely confused because neither dolphins nor the South Pacific was mentioned anywhere in the paper, so I was struggling to think how to respond. Is it the pauses that could potentially come across as condescending? Or is it saying I didn't remember that being in the paper? The papers can often be quite dense, so I don't remember every detail; I've certainly been a student in discussion sections in which the professor says "Was that in there? Where? I don't remember...page six, you say? Oh, I see. Ok." I was trying to give the student a chance to explain. I still have no idea how he got "dolphins" because he refused to say anything.

But see, you weren't actually confused (except by how the student could be so wrong)-- you knew perfectly well the paper wasn't about dolphins. Students can tell the difference between genuine uncertainty and feigned uncertainty -- I know you don't mean it to, but the latter comes across as condescending.

And it may not be fair, but  faculty can get away with expressing more uncertainty than TAs often-- most students start with the default assumption that their professor is competent, a curtesy they don't necessary extend to TAs (or sometimes even to junior, especially female, faculty depending on the students). So you have to earn their trust first, then you can start modeling how not knowing everyone is OK and how to find the information when you don't.

When I'm genuinely unsure of what a student is asking, I generally say something like "Interesting, can you say a little more about that?", then I'll pull out a nugget of truth if there is one "Ah, what I think you're getting at is. . .", or correct "I can see why you reached that conclusion, but let's take a look. . ." 

If I were to toss the question to the rest of the students or ask someone to read the section aloud so we could go through it as a class, what do I say to preface this? If the student says "Dolphins!", wouldn't it be rude for me to immediately say, "Ok, does anyone else have a different idea?" or "Ok, let's re-read that section..." Isn't that being too dismissive of the original student's answer; telling them they are wrong without bothering to hear more about their perspective? Hegemony and others on this thread suggested asking the student to reference a page number and point to a specific part of the text that informed their answer so you can try to understand their thought process. That's what I meant to do here. Should I have worded it differently?

I don't really preface it with anything if the answer is truly wrong-- asking them to point to a page number in that circumstance, when you know they can't because they are wrong, could again unintentionally come across as showing the student up rather than giving them a chance to explain. When it's something that's not just factually wrong, I'll ask them to expand on their point and see if I can pull out a kernel of correctness to then expand on myself.Sometimes when it's clear they are confused on a particular word or concept I'll fill that in, then ask again ("Ah, but remember heritability is a population measure, not an individual measure, does that change how you're thinking about this?"). 

You really do have to tell them they are wrong when they are though, otherwise you're not actually teaching them-- it's all in how you do it. At the beginning of my seminars we talk about how it's OK to be wrong and to express uncertainty, and OK for others to jump in a and disagree respectfully, and in fact this is necessary for good science and good discussions. I encourage them to ask clarification questions at any point, and sometimes redirect those to the rest of the class when I'm pretty confident someone will be able to answer ("Good question, does anyone want to take a shot at that?").

Would you recommend I instruct the groups to write down their answers so I can come by and check progress?

Yes! I didn't realize they weren't doing this. Absolutely, make them write them down-- it will help them think through the answers (writing is thinking), help you monitor what they are doing, and help them feel accountable and stay on track (even when not graded, having to write something down seems to keep students much more focused). I would also have them fill in the other group's (corrected) answers as you discuss, so each student ends with a complete sheet. This may help them feel like they've ended with a clearer understanding of the paper, and so help convince them that this is a useful activity.

If I do try to set a group on the right track during the group-work, what do I do if they just stare blankly at me? Do I try to get them to engage, or do I just explain whatever they refuse to answer for themselves? And if a group is having trouble answering a gimme question like "What did the results of Experiment 3 cause the authors to question? (see page 3, paragraph 2)," how can I point them to page 3, paragraph 2 containing the sentence, "The results of Experiment 3 caused us to question..." without seeming to patronize them?

I would back off of those types of questions-- I know you think they need them, but I think they may be coming across as condescending busy work, which is highly demotivating. In my experience if you treat students as capable learners most of them will rise to the occasion. Keep the page numbers off the worksheet, and then when you circulate and they are having trouble with that question, you can say "check this paragraph and see if you can figure it out, and then I'll check back with you after I check on the other groups".

The remaining 20% seemed to remain clueless no matter how much scaffolding was provided, and clammed up when I tried to ask them questions to see where they were in their understanding.

You will never reach 100% of the students. This 20% do not want to learn and you can't change that for them. Teach the other 80%.