Teaching kids to roll with the knocks – and aim for the moon

ARC-funded researchers are teaching resilience and how to manage knockbacks in order to help young people to be more emotionally secure and also more successful in their education and the workforce.

Professor Martin Westwell is Director of the Centre for Science Education for the 21^st  Century (Science21) at Flinders University, and a chief investigator in the ARC Science of Learning Research Centre which investigates the neuroscience of the human learning process.

Speaking to InDaily, Professor Westwell says that researchers are starting to think about resilience in other ways than general emotional resilience, and that children need to become more creative, innovative and entrepreneurial in order to thrive in an uncertain future.

Adelaide’s Patch Theatre Company has recruited Professor Westwell as a ‘Scientist in Residence’ to work on the latest production for 4-8 year old children, called Yo Diddle Diddle. In a novel marriage of the arts, science and academic pedagogy, the show’s focus is on the nursery rhyme about the cow who stoically decides to jump over the moon, with mixed success. The play is inspired by Tony Wilson’s children’s book The Cow Tripped Over the Moon.

Media issued by INdaily.