2. Why focus on Mathematical
Resilience?
Working on the assumption that...
mathematical resilience will improve mathematical
achievement.
• Students taking a greater responsibility for their own learning – students
are discovering mathematical concepts rather than just accepting information
that is passed on
• Resilience can be taught and learnt
• Resilience positively impacts learners, empowering them and creating
success for all students
• It can become a common classroom and school language about learning
• Maintains high expectations of all Aboriginal students to achieve
• Valuing mathematics and its connection to the world
• Learnt skills are transferrable to others areas of learning and also life for
future learning

3. Defining mathematical resilience
Resilience in general...
“Resilience refers to the ability to successfully manage your life and
adapt to change and stressful events in healthy and constructive ways”
(Dent, M).
“An individual’s ability to thrive and fulfil potential despite or perhaps
because of stressors or risk factors” (Neill, J).
How does this connect with mathematical learning and success?
“When mathematically resilient pupils are required to use mathematics
in a new situation they will expect to find it hard at first but will have
strategies or approaches to overcome the initial “can’t do it” response”
(Johnston-Wilder S & Lee C).

5. Resilience Indicators
How can we identify resilience in students?
• Confidence in their own ability to try something new
• Sharing their knowledge willingly with others
• A range of useful strategies to apply in different situations
• Challenging themselves
• Solving different problems
• Formulating their own questions – identify what they don’t already know and
possible ways to explore this
• Identifying what comes next in their learning
• Reflecting on their learning and describe the processes that have taken – using
metalanguage and mathematical vocabulary
• Maintaining their attention and focus for longer periods of time in order to gain
a better understanding
• Noticing themselves achieving new understandings through “A-ha” or “Wow!”
moments and they are interested in sharing these with others
• Knowing their own strengths and weaknesses
• Persisting in their learning instead of giving up and declaring “I don’t know how
to”

6. Five Main Indicators for Resilience
Growth mindset – after building a complex robot first that wouldn’t stay together, Hope
decided to rethink her construction and designed a simpler model.

7. Meta-cognition – during reflections of the maths learning a student wrote on a post-it note
that they could figure out where to place numbers on a number line between 0 and 1 but couldn’t
go past one. They identified that they would have to explore this tomorrow, highlighting different
ways that they could do this.
Student responses during reflection to describe what they did or didn’t
understand and how they worked.

8. Adaptability – understanding that mathematics is interrelated and that knowledge in one area
is useful and required in another.
When sorting Hope first arranged her bears in
colour groups only. She reflected on this and
rearranged her bears in sub-groups according to
size as well as colour. This broke the bears into
smaller groups, which made is possible to estimate
at a glance the group that had more.
When sorting ,Cayleb first arranged his blocks in
random order and found it difficult to tell which was
the largest amount. He reflected on this and
rearranged his blocks in ascending order and found
it easier to determine the size of the groupings. We
often use the terminology “have I seen something
like this before? What worked and what didn’t
work?”

9. Interpersonal – Developing and valuing working relationships with their peers. When
problem solving students are encouraged to seek the help of their peers and work alongside
different people in group situations rather than independently. Majority of students thrive in these
groupings due to their conversations about learning and working problems out together.
“Uh oh” moment. Alexander realised
that Fadia wasn’t counting one to
one. He suggested that she ‘make a
line’ so that her amount of fences
could match his.
Resilience strategies: Trying another
idea, teaching someone else.

10. Sense of purpose – Before learning about fractions, decimals and percentages
students brainstormed and gathered information about where we use these in our lives and
continued to add to their ideas as they came across examples. Students had to create a plan
of a robot for their partner to construct. Their plans had to be informative and descriptive
enough for their friend to understand.
Fractions, decimals and
percents brainstorm
Picture of a house

11. How the classroom supports this
• Discovering new information for themselves that are connected to reality
• Problem solving situations
• Primary Years: Students are allowed the opportunity to decide which
processes they will take, what materials they will use, where they will work
and with who, how they will record and explain their discoveries.
• Junior Primary Years: Open ended process where students have a choice of
materials but the possible strategies are modelled and students are guided
through their problem solving. The language is explicitly used and taught
throughout the thinking process.
• Results are not the key focus, rather than the process taken. Reflections are
focused on not necessarily their ‘answers’ but the strategies they used,
obstacles they faced and overcame and what they could try next time.
• Mathematical discoveries are celebrated daily and students are experiencing
fun while learning. They are given the opportunity to be mathematical,
without worrying whether or not their answers are correct.
• Strategies are explicitly spoken about and other people’s ways of working out
are considered and shared and at times even copied.

12. Language for Resilience
Resilient strategies used when problem solving
Keep trying
Ask a question
Work with a friend
Try all ideas
Make a model
Use concrete materials
Break it into smaller parts
Draw a picture or a graph
Have I seen something like this before?
Guess and check answer
Make a list
WOW! or Ah-Ha! moment

15. Feeling pride in their discoveries and
learning...celebrating their
achievements

16. Student video
What resilient indicators can you see? What
strategies has the student used when problem
solving?