In schools today, the focus is not only on helping students pass exams but also on improving their character by making them more resilient. Resilience in learning, as in life, is about being able to persevere through setbacks, take on challenges and risk making mistakes to reach goals.

Research studies support the notion that the ability of undergraduate students to show resilience throughout their academic journey will have a positive influence on their academic performance.  

So how can teachers help to develop more resilient students? Neurologist and teacher Judy Willis cites three simple techniques to help teachers build resilience in their students. The main areas to focus on are a child’s competence, their tolerance to mistakes and their ability to set goals.

1. Competence builds resilience

Young people can be discouraged when they encounter tasks which they relate to negative past experiences. These can often act as a ‘mental block’ which make certain tasks seem overwhelming. Teachers can help students overcome that mindset by building their confidence through experiences that develop their competence.

Teachers can demonstrate to students the ability to break down complex tasks into manageable and digestible parts. This will help students approach such tasks with a much more positive outlook. Once the task is completed, the teacher can explain and reinforce the student’s ability to break something down into more understandable parts, in turn building their competence awareness. This will help develop a mindset of ‘complicated tasks must be broken down into bitesize chunks.’  This will build the students’ resilience when undertaking complex tasks.

2. Learning from failure

Another way in which teachers can build the resilience of their students is by incorporating opportunities for students to experience mistakes as an expected part of learning. This helps build resilience to setbacks, a critical characteristic for success in all levels of academic and personal education.

Teachers should ensure that their students are aware that they will make mistakes and that these should not be viewed as failures. In fact the contrary, they are learning opportunities that can be used to manipulate future behaviour in a desirable way.

When a student corrects an error, their brain builds new wiring to guide them to make a better choice next time. Therefore doing something wrong can actually be beneficial in long-term development, replacing misinformation with firm experience.

3. Personal meaning builds persistence 

It is commonly acknowledged that you are more likely to persist with something if you enjoy it or it holds a personal meaning to you. The same applies for students. Students will engage more if they have to use the facts or procedures as tools for participating in personally relevant tasks.

Teachers should strive to incorporate appealing activities into their lessons. For example, adapt word problems in maths so that they incorporate the names of icons, sports heroes or other people of high interest to your students.