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Approximately one in three people worldwide suffers from mathematics anxiety, with scholarly literature demonstrating that it has significant consequences for both individuals and wider society. While underlying related concepts, such as self-efficacy and emotional regulation, have been studied, there has been less research into accessible, practical approaches that teachers, support staff, carers and learners can use to overcome emotional barriers to learning mathematics. However, one exception is the Mathematical Resilience Toolkit by Johnston-Wilder et al. This paper reviews the research underpinning the Mathematical Resilience Toolkit, introduces the concept of psychological safety, and presents and evaluates the results of a small-scale study. The Toolkit was used with eight mature GCSE mathematics learners in a further education college. In this exploratory study, data were collected from interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. The key themes that emerged highlight the importance of addressing emotional aspects of learning mathematics in the classroom for those returning to mathematics from adverse prior experiences. All participants rated the Mathematical Resilience Toolkit as 'extremely useful' and would advise using it as a practical strategy for any adult with anxiety in mathematics learning. This approach warrants further research to establish its efficacy in different contexts.

In line with the purpose of this special issue, we examine how school leaders can lead to create the vision and reality for schools and their communities to explicitly address forms of academic anxiety and emotional exclusion. We suggest how school leaders can work to engage parents in helping to remove acquired affective disability and 'emotional handbrakes', promote academic resilience and enhance progress. We describe such a process as 'academic safe-guarding'.

The Mathematical Resilience Scale measures students' attitudes toward studying mathematics, using three correlated factors: Value, Struggle, and Growth. The Mathematical Resilience Scale was developed and validated using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses across three samples. Results provide a new approach to gauge the likelihood of student participation and persistence in mathematics.

Pupil voice is an emerging force for change and improvement in many UK schools, but what is not fully understood is how best to access pupil voice within the specific context of secondary mathematics departments. This paper presents a research project designed to use pupils as co-researchers in increasing knowledge about how to improve learning in mathematics. Pupils within the school were selected and trained as "Ambassadors" to understand and disseminate innovative ways of learning mathematics into their school environment and to act to allow the voice of all the pupils in their year group to be heard. The project was intended both to raise the pupils' awareness of how learning mathematics could be different and to enable them to voice their newly informed opinions about how best they learned mathematics. The pupils' current feelings about the way that they were taught mathematics were explored, but the focus of the project was on enabling the pupils to make informed decisions about how they felt their learning could be improved. The pupils' awareness of different ways of learning mathematics was raised by introducing them to alternative teaching approaches. The data generated were initially analysed by the pupils themselves in order to inform their teachers about their views and subsequently constant comparison analysis resulted in the outcomes reported here. The outcomes indicate that the students could have an important role in enabling schools to develop their teaching and improve their pupils' mathematical learning when that voice is both informed and authorised.

One-third of the current A-level mathematics curriculum is determined by choice, constructed out of "applied mathematics" modules in mechanics, statistics and decision mathematics. Although this choice arguably involves the most sizeable instance of choice in the current English school mathematics curriculum, and it has a significant impact on students' post-compulsory study of mathematics, it is not well understood how this choice is navigated. This article explores how mathematics teachers perceive each of these three areas of applied mathematics, how widely each of the modules is offered and in what ways perception might be connected to provision. Data from an online questionnaire and follow-up interviews demonstrate that teachers are influenced by a wide range of factors, including strategic concerns and views on the relative worth of each strand. The results also highlight the presence of inertia in centres' provision. In this way, this article offers some insight into current perception and provision of applied mathematics in England, and speaks to contemporary debates about curriculum content and reform. It argues that students' exposure to the powerful utility of mathematics is often unhelpfully steered or limited at a critical point in their education.

This paper compares the results of two surveys conducted between July 2009 and January 2010 with 45 subject matter experts (SMEs) and 41 game experts in the UK. The surveys examine the attitudes and attitude differences of the participants towards teachers who use games in the classroom and studios that produced educational games. The findings revealed respondents'attitudes were statistically significantly less positive--comparing ideal conditions to usual practice--for the issues studied. The SMEs were unaware of the problems faced by educational game studios, which could lead to a scenario where games are made fun at the expense of learning outcomes or vice versa. In issues related to educational games, the SMEs were found to be certain only about aspects of related directly to teaching and learning while the games experts were confident only for game design and development. This revealed a need for collaboration between SMEs and game experts rather than independent production when designing and developing GBL solutions.

It is increasingly being recognised that a significant number of able students who embark on a mathematics degree become disenchanted and move away from mathematics after graduating. This paper reports on the experiences of four such learners, exploring their mathematical trajectories against ideas in current literature. Through a consideration of their evolving agentic identities, we argue that observed difficulties arise not only out of cognitive challenges, but also from a paucity of resilient learning strategies and behaviours specific to mathematics. In this way, we offer a perspective which has relevance in preparing future students more effectively.

The term "mathematical resilience" is used to describe a learner's stance towards mathematics that enables pupils to continue learning despite finding setbacks and challenges in their mathematical learning journey. There are ways of working in mathematics that increase mathematical resilience and conversely there are ways of working that decrease pupils' mathematical resilience. In this article, the authors first discuss what mathematical resilience is, why it is important for pupils to develop it, and then consider what ways of working increase mathematical resilience. All learning requires a certain resilience but the authors contend that the resilience required for learning mathematics (mathematical resilience) is a particular construct due to the specific barriers that are presented when learning mathematics, at least in part because of the type of teaching that has often been used (e.g. tedious, isolationist, using rote learning, elitist and depersonalised) and in part because of pervasive beliefs about the fixed nature of mathematics ability. (Contains 1 note and a list of further readings.)

This paper looks at new teachers' use of information and communications technology (ICT) at the start of their first year of teaching. A previous study was made of 40 student teachers (May-July 2007) who were identified as very good users of ICT. This is a follow-up study involving 30 of these 40 participants during their first months of teaching (November-February 2008). Drawing on interview and observation data the study describes the use these new teachers make of ICT and considers the factors which encourage and discourage that use. It finds that they continue to see ICT as supporting both their whole-class teaching and pupils' independent working. The impact ICT has in the classroom provides the underlying rationale for its use by new teachers. Environmental factors, including access and expectations in school, further influence ICT use. Pre-service training remains a strong influence, in particular past modelling of ICT use by mentors and tutors. The findings are discussed in the context of the wider literature. (Contains 6 tables.)

This paper reports the findings from a study of student teachers at a university-school initial teacher education partnership in England. Forty student teachers, on primary and secondary teacher education programmes, were identified through tutor and mentor reports as making very good use of information and communication technologies (ICT). These student teachers were interviewed, and in many cases observed, teaching a lesson using ICT. Interviews covered their use of ICT in a particular lesson; their past experience of using ICT; factors encouraging or discouraging their use of ICT in school; and their beliefs about teaching and learning. Observations recorded their uses of hardware and software. Findings indicate that access, support for, and modelling of, ICT use in the classroom were key issues in developing this very good use of ICT. Equally important, however, seemed to be the belief that ICT could make a positive difference to teaching and learning and a willingness to "learn by doing". These findings are reported in the context of the wider literature. (Contains 5 tables.)

This article is the third in a series of articles describing a research project entitled "Entering into Symbols" (EIS) on the use of mathematical applets at key stages 2 and 3. The first two articles, in "MT200" and "MT203", described applets designed to teach place value ("Tuckshop subtraction") and basic algebra ("Matchbox algebra"). In this third applet, the authors turn to the teaching of fractions to 9- to 12-year-old pupils with an applet called "FractionKit".

This article describes a recent and successful initiative on teaching place value and the decomposition method of subtraction to pupils having difficulty with this technique in the 9-12-year age range. The aim of the research was to explore whether using the metaphor of selling chews (i.e., sweets) in a tuck shop and developing this into an iconic representation of the process of decomposition could help to support children's understanding of decomposition and thus make the technique more accessible. The authors, who tried using Java applets and the EIS (enactive, iconic, and symbolic) approach in creating the "Tuckshop" project, have been very encouraged by the results. The authors cite several reasons why the project was successful: (1) The underlying metaphor of "unpacking chews" is easy to grasp; (2) Learners develop the concepts in ways that are consistent with, and build upon, their common sense; (3) The "EIS" approach draws in all types of learners, whether their preferred learning style is kinaesthetic, visual or abstract. (Contains 9 figures and 1 footnote.)

The workshop, "Is Mathematics Inclusive or Exclusive? Putting colour, culture and context in the curriculum" was held in January 2022 with the goal of supporting a national discussion around race and the mathematics curriculum in UK higher education. This report summarises the talks and discussion, which related to racial and ethnic inclusion in the history of mathematics, race and culture in mathematics education, and ethics and inclusion in mathematics. It concludes with a proposal of actions for individuals, departments and institutions and the mathematics community in UK higher education to move work on this area forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some non-traditional adult learners in higher education lack mathematics qualifications, have had negative experiences of mathematics in the past, feel anxious about mathematics, lack confidence, or protect themselves by avoiding the subject. As part of a widening participation initiative, a lifelong learning centre at a large university in England developed a programme of free mathematics lessons for these learners. This paper discusses the findings from a small-scale narrative study which analysed the mathematical stories of four of these learners. The research found that, although their previous feelings about mathematics lingered, participants overcame their emotional barriers to learning mathematics with sensitive support from others, specific teaching and learning strategies, and by increasing their mathematical resilience. They were able to move away from feeling frightened of mathematics, to persevere and feel more comfortable with it. The notion of perezhivanie (Vygotsky, 1994) was used to conceptualise the barriers created by past, strong emotional experiences and developing ability to manage the associated feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]