#162: Designing for Resilience as Preparation for Challenging STEM Tasks

We designed a novel instructional package targeting distinct facets of mental and emotional resilience for thirty-nine primary school students as preparation for a collaborative design challenge in a Singaporean science classroom. Our mental resilience package nudged sensemaking around growth mindset by having students make predictions on myths, and offered vicarious learning opportunities for everyone to evaluate peer quotations of reframing failure. Our emotional resilience package used contrasting cases complemented with expressive writing to help students discern the usefulness of positive and negative emotions in learning. Several data sources – including students’ reflections, their descriptions of enacted resilience behaviors, and observable measures of science learning – showed evidence that this work may have already begun planting seeds for normalizing failure and persevering emotionally through setbacks.