Maths anxiety - how to support secondary students with Dr Sarah Buckley (ACER)

Transcript 

Introduction:

You’re listening to the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership podcast where we showcase conversations with some of the world’s biggest thought leaders in education. We also bring you the thoughts and reflections of teachers and school leaders from across Victoria.

Click on the show notes linked to access downloadable resources discussed in this episode. You will also find timestamps for direct navigation to specific topics within this podcast.

Rachael Gore:

Hello, my name is Rachael Gore. I am Leading Teacher for Numeracy and Head of Mathematics at Albert Park College. I'm also a member of the Alumni Advisory Group for the Teacher Excellence Program at the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership. And I'm very excited to be chatting with Dr. Sarah Buckley today about her research. Sarah is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Education Research where she leads the Maths, Anxiety and Engagement Strategy, also known as MAES. Welcome, Sarah.

Sarah Buckley:

Thank you very much, Rachael. I'm really looking forward to our chat today.

Rachael Gore:

So before we begin today, can you please share with us what is the Maths Anxiety Engagement Strategy, or MAES?

Sarah Buckley:

So MAES is an initiative that started at ACER in about 2018, and it was created to address this widespread decline in maths achievement and participation that we were seeing nationally. And in particular, MAES is trying to address this issue by trying to target key barriers to students, learning in maths and their participation and also key barriers that stop them from developing a positive relationship with maths.

And when I say a positive relationship with maths, I'm not meaning we want all students to love maths and think it's amazing. Obviously it'd be wonderful if they did. But what we are saying is we want students to understand the usefulness of maths and how it can open so many doors and pathways for them for their future. So that's the main goal of MAES. And what we do in it is we look at research from not only education, but also psychology and neuroscience to see what is best practice for understanding these key barriers and also addressing them and removing them so students can develop that positive relationship with maths. And in MAES, we've identified two key barriers: maths anxiety, and also poor valuing of maths. And after we identify that key research, and some of it is actually research that ACER is doing itself. But after we identify that research, what we are trying to do is then translate it so that it has an impact in the classroom.

So we're working with schools, teachers, with departments, with universities, with different education stakeholders and saying, "Okay, we've got this research. We know what best practice evidence-informed strategies we need to be using. How do we actually implement them in the classroom? Let's work with you to develop resources and tools."

Rachael Gore:

We want to see. A change removal of those barriers, hopefully, so we can get more kids on board with maths.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

And greater appreciation of maths in society as well. So, we're talking about maths anxiety, and this is something that is spoken about a lot in education communities and even out in the general public. But really what is maths anxiety?

Sarah Buckley:

Well, in the research literature it's generally talked about as the tension and the worry and the nervousness that someone can feel when doing maths, not just even when doing maths, but anticipating that they have to do maths.

It's more than just disliking maths or it is different to disliking maths because maths anxiety is an emotion. Essentially it's having anxiety when it comes to maths.

Rachael Gore:

Okay.

Sarah Buckley:

So it's an emotion. And when I talk to teachers about what does it look like or how might you see it in the classroom, often they will tell me about the things that we find that are like what we call them, companions of anxiety, things that we often see alongside them, like poor confidence, sometimes it might be a dislike of maths, a disengagement. But when we're talking about maths anxiety, we are talking about that fear, that worry, that nervousness, that tension that you feel when you're having to do maths or thinking about having to do maths. I think it's really important to identify, we're talking about an emotion because we need to pinpoint what we're talking about to try and find the strategies that we need to address it.

And in MAES we differentiate maths anxiety into its symptoms and its causes.

Rachael Gore:

Okay. So it's not just, I don't like maths, I have maths anxiety, I've never liked it. It's something that's really grounded in that individual and their emotional experience.

Sarah Buckley:

Yes, absolutely. If someone is experiencing maths anxiety, it could be like a transient thing. It could be something they experienced in the moment, but it could be something that they've experienced for a long time, over time and has really impacted on their relationship with maths.

Rachael Gore:

Okay. So you mentioned that there are some symptoms, but what are these and how might they be seen by parents or teachers and also their fellow students in the classroom?

Sarah Buckley:

When we're talking about the symptoms of maths anxiety, we're actually talking about the symptoms that we might see with any type of anxiety, whether that's about maths or any of those other common ones that we might say like spiders or heights or any of those.

But we can really differentiate them into two parts. There's a physiological part, which is the beating heart, the butterflies in the stomach, the sweaty palms, any of those things that we would feel when we're really anxious about something in the moment. And then we also have these cognitive symptoms, which are really very highly intrusive, negative thoughts that sometimes can get stuck in our head. And when we're talking about maths anxiety, these types of thoughts are like, I'm never going to understand this. I'm never going to get it. And they become quite circular.

People can get stuck in a cycle when it comes to these cognitive symptoms and find it hard to move out of it. And what the research says is these symptoms of maths anxiety, these are the things that really impact on a student's ability to demonstrate their potential in maths and to learn, because we know that these symptoms interrupt working memory and working memory's super important for lots of different things in our lives, but in particular in maths because it's what we use to take information, hold it in our head and manipulate it. So we can see that's really useful for maths learning.

So what anxiety does is because we're focusing on wanting to do something in maths and then we have these intrusive thoughts, our working memory is overloaded, it has too much to do, trying to do the maths and also get on top of these thoughts. It becomes overloaded and that's when students feel like they've blanked or they've forgotten everything, and it means that they're not able to learn as effectively as they should be able to.

Rachael Gore:

So if we've got teachers in the classroom, they might hear students saying some of those thoughts or phrases over and over again, or they might see it as a student just going, "I just went blank. Couldn't do it. Couldn't remember."

Sarah Buckley:

Yes.

Rachael Gore:

I thought I studied really hard, but I got in there and nothing was there.

Sarah Buckley:

And nothing was there. And I think that's where this research is really useful, because if as a student you're constantly coming up against that experience, then eventually you might get to a point where you think, well, I'm just not going to study anymore because it's not being useful for me. But in reality, if you can turn that thinking and say, well, the issue is that the anxiety that you're experiencing is stopping you from retrieving that knowledge and using your skills that you have really worked hard on, if we can give you the tools to regulate that anxiety, then that's going to come to you when you need it. So all that effort that you're putting in is really worthwhile.

Rachael Gore:

So they have actually learnt the maths, it's just about the recall ...

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

... in that moment. So that's a bit of a myth buster for those students, and they can then think that they do have a bit of control in that moment.

Sarah Buckley:

Exactly.

Rachael Gore:

So they're experiencing all of these symptoms. They've got these emotional ones coming from that emotion, and then they've got what's happening in their body and what's happening in their mind, but what's causing it?

Sarah Buckley:

In MAES, when we're talking about the causes, we really look at these really negative, enduring, well-developed attitudes and patterns of thinking about maths. And essentially what we see is that these are related to a fixed mindset when it comes to maths. So all educators will know that a fixed mindset is really when we think that our learning in maths, our potential in maths is fixed, it's related to things that are beyond our control. So genetics, luck, and we don't think that we can get better if we put in effort. So that's the thinking that's associated with a fixed mindset.

When we're looking at how to approach and address the causes of maths anxiety in MAES, we draw on a theory called the control value theory of achievement emotions. And that theory looks at the experience of lots of different types of emotions in the classroom. But when it comes to anxiety, it says that anxiety is experienced when you have some valuing of maths combined with feelings of low control. And I think it's important to stop there and pause because a lot of teachers think that if a student is anxious, then they don't value maths. But in reality, we all know that in order to feel anxious about something, we have to value it, otherwise we would be apathetic. We wouldn't care.

Rachael Gore:

So them having that emotion is actually your first point in because the kids actually care about how they're going to go.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right. So that's a really good thing to emphasise. You're anxious because you care about what you're doing. You value maths in some way, and that's where this has come from. That's great.

The issue is that it's paired with this idea that you don't have control over your learning in your performance. And so in MAES, what we're doing is we're saying, "Okay, well how do we address that low control belief or these patterns of thinking that come from that belief? How do we address that?" Because the ultimate consequence of maths anxiety and any type of anxiety actually is avoidance. In MAES what we're trying to do is increase participation in maths so that students see it as important in their lives. We want to take away anything that's going to lead to avoidance. And what teachers might see the causes of maths anxiety looking like in the classroom are things like procrastination, avoidance, disengagement, dropping maths as soon as you can.

Rachael Gore:

So these are students who are tapping out and we presume they just don't like maths. They might not care about it, but actually they are highly engaged emotionally in the mathematics, but that's caused them to withdraw.

Sarah Buckley:

Well, we should take an opportunity to say if this student is tapping out, what's underneath that? Is it anxiety? Is it because that's what anxiety can look like? But we know that there are other reasons.

Rachael Gore:

Absolutely.

Sarah Buckley:

[inaudible 00:12:00] as well.

Rachael Gore:

Absolutely. And we don't want to say that every student who leaves mathematics is experiencing mathematics anxiety, but for some students, that might be the key to unlocking future mathematical pathways, that then have huge consequences for their future lives and academic careers and general engagement within society, because then they have that chance to engage in that subject.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right. I can't tell you the amount of university students that I've spoken to who have chosen a career path or not chosen a career path because it involved maths.

Rachael Gore:

It becomes one of those deciding factors. So it's really interesting when we've got that research around maths anxiety and how that can then lead to those societal patterns that we see in mathematical engagement as well.

So as educators, we now understand what maths anxiety is. We can understand some of the symptoms and some of the long-term impact, but if we are starting to recognise maths anxiety in our students, what strategies can we use to support them? 'Cos once we notice we want to be able to help?

Sarah Buckley:

I think that there's a lot of really excellent work that's happening in schools where teachers are doing all that they can because they know that maths anxiety is a problem for some students. What we see in schools is most of the time when teachers are trying to reduce anxiety, what they're doing is they're trying to get at it through one of those companions that we talked about.

So they might be trying to build skills or build confidence in students that are anxious with the idea that if they do that, then anxiety indirectly will decrease. And we know that that's an effective strategy, but we also know that it's not necessarily effective in the long term when a student might move to a new teacher and attribute all of those learning gains and positive attitudes to the teacher rather than themselves. But we also know that that strategy doesn't necessarily work with students that are really highly anxious about maths. And I think the best way to try and understand why is to again, remember that maths anxiety is essentially just anxiety. And when we are really anxious about something, whether that's maths, but also whether that's spiders or hearts or something like that ...

Rachael Gore:

You’ve picked on of mine. Well done.

Sarah Buckley:

So let's talk about spiders.

Rachael Gore:

Okay, great.

Sarah Buckley:

So if you are anxious about spiders and someone brings a spider over to you and says, "Look, here's this spider, it's not going to hurt you. It's much smaller than you are. If you leave it alone, it will leave you alone. So it's okay." If you're highly anxious about spiders, that's not what you wanted to hear, and I'm not sure you would really take any of that in.

Rachael Gore:

If there was a spider between us right now, I would not be listening to a word that you were saying, Sarah, I would be focused completely on that spider and my brain would just shut down. Because that's what happens when we see a spider. We go into that, or when I do, I know, we go into that space where I'm not thinking, I'm reacting.

Sarah Buckley:

And so if you are a student that is really anxious about math and a teacher comes over to you and says, it's okay, let's work through this together. No matter how well a teacher is doing to really scaffold that student, that anxiety can really be operating as a barrier, stopping that really important information from getting in. So what we need to do is actually use psychological strategies that don't involve any maths ...

Rachael Gore:

Or any spiders.

Sarah Buckley:

... or any spiders, but we use those strategies to give students the ability to reduce and regulate those really heightened symptoms that they're feeling in the moment. And when we reduce and regulate that, then they're much more likely to take in that information that the teacher is trying to impart. And it's also important to highlight that I am using specific language. I'm saying that we want to reduce and regulate anxiety. I'm not saying that we want to eliminate it entirely because anxiety is not all bad, and some of it is actually really good for our learning. So we also need to reframe our thinking around that.

Anxiety gets a really bad rap.

Rachael Gore:

It does, but it means we care.

Sarah Buckley:

It means we care. So let's focus on we're taking control over it so it's not harmful. But acknowledging that if we take control over it and reduce it to a level where it's low or moderate for some people, some people will find that a moderate level of anxiety is actually where they do their best. They need that to fuel them. I think that's really important to acknowledge.

Rachael Gore:

It can certainly give you a boost. If you're feeling a little bit anxious, you've got a bit of extra energy. Can even feel a bit excited.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

And that's something that can give you that extra strength to push through something or engage in something. And so in modern society, sometimes you want to remove everything or strip it back, but leaning into some of that complexity and letting students know that it's actually safe to feel a little bit of that, and indeed it's normal and we're worried if you weren't.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

In many ways.

Sarah Buckley:

Exactly. Exactly.

Rachael Gore:

In many ways.

Sarah Buckley:

I think with all of the approaches that are coming out on emotion regulation and ways to address negative emotion are saying it's so important to say "Yes, there's no problem with feeling any particular emotion that we feel, whether that's anxiety, anger, happiness, whatever. We can feel whatever we feel. The next thing that happens is our choice." So whether what we do with that anxiety that we feel, that's where we have a choice and that's where we can take action so that it doesn't have a negative impact.

Rachael Gore:

And that's where we can give some students that sense of control.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

Because they've got the value, but they haven't got the control. So, how can we give them some control? What are some of the strategies that allow them to think about once they've experiencing that particular emotion? How can they get back to that optimal performance state?

Sarah Buckley:

So we talk about different strategies for the symptoms versus the causes. For the symptoms, a really highly effective strategy that is so simple is deep breathing exercises and students learning how to breathe from the diaphragm rather than from the chest. Even giving them an understanding that when we are anxious in the moment, often we are breathing in a way that is reinforcing that feeling. So teaching them how to breathe in that way is very effective. It's also a really simple thing that can be implemented in the classroom. We can use it to help students readiness or learning or help them to refocus. So it's got a lot of different uses.

Rachael Gore:

I just wrote down learning, I think, is really important there because people I can breathe. I think it's around actually learning what specifically that strategy looks like and what is the optimal time for students to learn that strategy in a classroom.

Sarah Buckley:

I think ideally with this strategy and with a couple of the others that I'm going to talk about, it's really important to introduce these strategies and not talk about them as being for anxiety. 'Cos we don't want to prime students that they should be feeling anxiety or emphasise any anxiety that students might already be feeling. What we can do if you wanted to introduce it in a class setting is you could introduce it at the beginning of a lesson and say, "Look, we're just going to do this really simple activity to really prime us to get started for this lesson, and we're going to do it a couple of times a week." Now, there's a couple of benefits to this. One, it becomes something habitual that students can then draw on. Because often with these strategies, we find that if we only practice them when we are in that state of negative emotion, it's so much harder to draw on them.

And two, if they're introduced in that class setting, then a student can draw on them on their own and no one has to know. So you introduce it at the beginning of a lesson, and then if a student gets anxious later on down the track, they can just draw on it and no one would know. But it's something that's highly effective and useful for them.

Rachael Gore:

And for young people, having that in a way that it's not exposing them to their peers, they're able to do it just for them, I think is really impactful. So we can teach them to breathe properly and well. What else can we do for the various symptoms that they might be experiencing?

Sarah Buckley:

So we can also use mindfulness. It's often used in schools as a way of improving wellbeing, but some people aren't aware that it's also a really useful strategy for regulating negative emotion.

And so let's be clear what we mean by mindfulness.

Rachael Gore:

It's a big word. Mindfulness is used a lot.

Sarah Buckley:

So we're not saying we want to clear our minds.

Rachael Gore:

Nope.

Sarah Buckley:

What we want to do is try and help ourselves be present in the moment. Often this can be done by asking people to observe their breathing. It's also really important when we're practicing mindfulness, to remember that some of those negative thoughts that we might be having, if we're anxious about maths, for instance, that they could come in while we're trying to just focus on our breathing and that's okay. We shouldn't judge that. We should just acknowledge that thought, let it pass and refocus on our breathing. That can be a really great strategy for students that are anxious to deal with their symptoms.

Another strategy that we have found that is highly effective is expressive writing or expressive drawing.

Rachael Gore:

Writing in maths.

Sarah Buckley:

Yes.

Rachael Gore:

Okay. Tell me more.

Sarah Buckley:

So I'll focus on expressive writing. There's been a lot of research that shows that this is a really highly effective strategy for addressing maths anxiety. The idea behind it is you ask a student or an individual that's anxious to just write freely about the thoughts and feelings that they're having in that moment, and they don't share that with anyone unless they want to. It is a judgment-free zone for them. They don't have to worry about grammar or anything like that. They just basically want to get the things that are happening in their head ...

Rachael Gore:

Out.

Sarah Buckley:

... out and on paper. And the idea is that when we're experiencing those cognitive symptoms of maths anxiety, that we can get stuck in the loop. And if we put those thoughts on paper, it helps free us from that loop and open our working memory to be able to focus on maths.

And we've seen that this is really highly effective with students who have been so anxious that they have been almost fainting in the bathroom before a maths lesson. If you ask them to just do a little bit of expressive writing before class starts or as class is starting, it can really help in the long term to get them to have a go and not avoid maths.

Rachael Gore:

It's almost like a purging, in a way.

Sarah Buckley:

Exactly. Exactly.

Rachael Gore:

So if I'm seeing a student doodling in class or encouraging them, that's something we can actually lead into at times, of that drawing and that outlet again.

Sarah Buckley:

Yes. So I think expressive drawing is sometimes something that teachers say, "Well, if we have students that don't want to write, can we get them to draw?" If they can draw what is in their head and they can get it on paper so that it has that same impact," then that's wonderful.

And then the last one that we often talk about is positive reframing. And I think we'll probably find that most teachers are already doing this in the classroom, but it's that idea of, well, we might have a negative situation that is causing us anxiety. Well, let's try and reframe or rethink that and see the positives in it. So we get our test result back and we haven't done well and we feel anxious because we have another test coming on, et cetera, et cetera. How would you talk to your students about that, Rachael? I'm sure that you have some positive reframing.

Rachael Gore:

Absolutely. I think if students aren't experiencing that stretch, they're not actually learning. And so I think it's really important for students to view and get excited about growth opportunities, to notice what they've done really well and to look at those things they might not have done as well, but get excited about those as chances for them to improve into the future as opposed to go, oh, I didn't go well. I can't. It's like, well, can, you just haven't got that yet. And then look at the things you have done really well and the skills that you're developing.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

And I think everything, really, of what we're talking about here comes down to that awareness and student agency. And that's something of really giving those students those tools so they can be thinking about their learning and be empowered and have control over their learning. So I think if a student gets a poor result, they might feel that they're being controlled as opposed to having that sense of control. So putting it back to them of how they can influence going forward, is really, really important.

So we've spoken about some of the symptoms, but are there actually strategies we can use for the causes of maths anxiety, intervening at that earlier level?

Sarah Buckley:

So for the causes of maths anxiety, what we're trying to do is really address that fixed mindset. That's the root cause of the experience of anxiety, feeling like I don't have control over my performance and learning in maths. And there are lots of different ways to do that. I think, I'm sure you'd be aware of fixed mindset interventions. But even before we get to that stage, one of the things that's really important to recognise is that students and anyone can have these types of negative beliefs and have them unconsciously. Or even believe that they have a positive relationship with maths, but actually when you delve deep and really think about it and try and identify the types of thinking that you have, actually maybe those beliefs underlying them aren't so positive. So the first thing that we need to do is we need to identify how a student thinks about maths. And there are lots of different things that you can do. You can have classroom discussions.

We often talk about maths metaphors as a really great way to identify the types of thinking that students might have around maths. And I've done a monograph for the Department of Education. I think the link to it will be in the show notes, but it talks about how to use that task and what that math metaphors task is. But ideally, once we've identified if there's any negative thinking or beliefs around math, then we want to challenge and change them. This is where it's so important to bring in the work that I was talking about where there's currently going on in schools. If you say to students, okay, we've identified that really at the root cause of your thinking about this is this belief that maybe you can't get better if you put time and effort in. But we think that you can and you can get better if you put that time in.

Students need to test out that new belief. And so they need opportunities for success and for confidence building. So that that new belief feels like it's reasonable.

Rachael Gore:

Because it has to be their belief.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

Not the teacher's belief. And you don't want them to have that experience of, I only performed well in this person's class because they believed in me.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

We actually want to have that transfer where students are believing in themselves and having that sense, especially if we're talking in the secondary context about how they can be thinking about their learning.

So, you've mentioned some resources, but can you share some more details about some of the resources that have been developed in partnership with the academy and with ACR and how they might be used in the classroom by educators?

Sarah Buckley:

Yes, I can. So we've been in partnership with the academy, I think, over the last six months or so? And what we've been trying to do in particular is develop some resources for secondary classrooms. We've done a lot of work in the primary space and we're just trying to branch out into that secondary space at the moment. So through that partnership we've been talking about, okay, how do we take the MAES approach to understanding anxiety and the strategies that we've talked about? How can we take those and make some resources that help students be able to draw on those tools that really have impact?

So we've developed two. The first is called The My Maths Check-in Poster, or can really be like an A-five card that every student can have in their maths book if they've got a physical one or on a laptop or a device. And this maths check-in is really about students identifying, for instance, at the beginning of a lesson or multiple times in a lesson, if that's useful, what type of emotion they're experiencing in maths and what type of attitude they have towards their learning.

Notice that I'm not saying anything about anxiety ...

Rachael Gore:

Did I mention it? We're not priming.

Sarah Buckley:

We're not priming. And there's a lot of different emotions that are experienced in maths, and some of them are really good at facilitating learning. So what type of emotion are they experiencing and is it potentially getting in the way of their learning? And what types of attitude are they feeling? So when we're talking about the emotion, that's really linking into the symptoms of maths anxiety, if it's there? And when we're talking about the attitude that's really linking into the cause of their maths anxiety.

So asking students to look at the card and identify where they are, and then this links into the second resource that we've developed, which is called the Maths Headspace Poster. And what we're trying to do is get students to, once they've identified their emotion in the Maths Check-in card, what they can then do is, if they feel that emotion's getting in the way of their learning, they can go to the poster, they can identify their emotion on this lovely wheel or doughnut as we've been calling it, and then they can find a strategy that links back to that particular emotion to help them then refocus, so that they can stop that emotion from getting in the way of their maths learning.

So it's really, what's my head space today in the maths classroom? Is this emotion going to be a problem for me? Yes it is. Okay, I'll go to the doughnut wheel. Oh, okay. Here's a strategy that I can use to try and refocus so I can get back on track.

Rachael Gore:

And they've got control.

Sarah Buckley:

They've got control.

Rachael Gore:

They're able to see, they've got awareness, and then they've got control over their learning, which is just fabulous because suddenly they've gone from my mind blanks, couldn't do anything, there's a spider in front of me, I'm stuck. To actually, there are steps I can take to get me to where I am. 'Cos we already know they care, and they want to get there.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

That's the amazing thing about this resource is that we're actually giving students those strategies. We're teaching students how to get where they want to go. 'Cos we already know that they value maths and that they want to be engaged and want to be involved.

And at the moment they're feeling powerless, but we're giving the power back to them.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

So it translates. Long term is the idea.

Sarah Buckley:

Absolutely. This is a lifelong skill that's going to be beneficial for anxiety that they might be feeling in any type of their learning. And I would say that you're absolutely right. This is about giving student agency. It requires the teacher to scaffold that process because on that poster, it will talk about things like expressive writing and deep breathing exercises. So, ideally, students have been exposed to these types of strategies. They're aware of what they are, they might've practiced them.

Rachael Gore:

They've habituated.

Sarah Buckley:

They've habituated. Exactly. But then they can go to that poster and they can take that control back, realize that it doesn't have to negatively impact. It's their choice what happens next. The emotion is fine. We're normalising all emotions in the classroom. They're all fine. We feel what we feel, but what we do next, that's within our control.

Rachael Gore:

And we can teach that.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

And as educators, we can step students through just like we teach them fraction to decimal conversion. We can teach them emotional to empowerment conversion.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right. That's right. Exactly. And it might feel like that's a bit of a strange thing to be doing in secondary maths classroom, bringing those types of strategies or tools in, but we know that they're highly, highly effective at removing that barrier, that anxiety can be. And can also be effective for other types of negative emotion that students might be feeling in the classroom as well.

Rachael Gore:

And that's the power of it, because it is research backed.

Sarah Buckley:

Yes.

Rachael Gore:

And that's what the evidence says.

Sarah Buckley:

That's right.

Rachael Gore:

Amazing.

We hope you enjoyed this podcast episode. You can stay up to date by subscribing to Academy Podcasts and following the academy on social media. Thank you so much for your time, Sarah. I loved chatting with you today, and I'm very excited about implementing some of these strategies with my students this year.

Sarah Buckley:

Oh, thank you so much, Rachael. It was lovely to talk to you.

Outro:

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