On Friday 4th of August, four of our Maths teachers were fortunate to attend the professional development day hosted by Earth Ed and presented by Dr. Jo Boaler from YouCubed.

Dr. Jo Boaler is a world-renowned pioneer in the field of Mathematics Education, a current Professor of Education at Stanford University and her work is internationally recognised by educators and social scientists. Mr. Kilfoyle, Mr. D’Offay, Ms. Chapman and Ms. Seyam had the opportunity to learn from Dr. Boaler’s extensive research into developing positive mathematical mindsets and motivating students to embrace a growth mindset when working mathematically. Our teachers explored strategies for students to ‘embrace struggle’ when working on difficult problems and develop a deep understanding of concepts by exploring various visual representations of mathematics.

Students at Geelong High School have been engaging in tasks that develop these skills, such as the collaborative activity conducted in the Year 10 Advanced Maths class where students were required to recognise patterns of quadratics functions and develop a formula that can be used to create a table of values and to solve for known values. Students collaborated to create a visual explanation of their reasoning and it was encouraging to see the many different approaches to the same task. More information about the work of Dr. Jo Boaler and how to support your child at home with their mathematical learning can be found at

https://www.youcubed.org/resource/youcubed-at-home/