Each Other's Anchor: How students' buoyancy and adaptability build each other up

We talk a lot about resilience, but how can we impact this attribute positively? Two distinct capacities sit underneath it: buoyancy (coping with everyday academic setbacks) and adaptability (adjusting to novelty and change). Our team's recent research shows they're not the same thing and that each one, over time, strengthens the other. For us teachers, that's great news: invest in either and you get a return on both.

Is this research trustworthy?

Involving nearly 6,000 students across general studies including maths and science in the UK and Australia, we performed six studies, each following students across two time points to investigate the crosstalk between academic buoyancy and adaptability. By any standards, this is a substantial evidence base.

While we might hear the terms used interchangeably, academic buoyancy and adaptability are distinct factors. They are co-travellers to be sure, but they are not the same attribute labelled twice. In every one of our six studies, across continents and subjects, the headline finding was the same: building either one provides later growth in the other. A positive feedback loop that can go either way – and we want to make sure that is upwards!

Why does this matter for teachers?

Students perceive science as hard (Putwain et al., 2023) - this perception can drive avoidance or engagement. Buoyancy and adaptability are the keys by which students can unlock the latter.

In the context of science though, adaptability and buoyancy are not just desirable orientations for our students to have, they happen to be central to science. Science is a tough gig. The universe does not care about falsifying your pet theory and paradigm shifts can be brutal. Academic buoyancy and adaptability are central to making science the best tool we have for understanding the world we inhabit. Perhaps it was Davisson and Germer sticking at it despite initial results falsifying the wave properties of electrons. Sure, it was a "lucky accident" that resulted in the breakthrough but the "luck" only happened because they persevered. Even the resilience of Michelson and Morley, who never saw the breakthrough that would measure the chimeric "eather wind", proved pivotal to Relativity. Their buoyancy is what advanced science, not being right. Looking for the evidence to falsify your stance is the default orientation of scientists, something that requires adaptability and buoyancy!

Being wrong is not a failure in science, it is the mechanism!

When a student's familiar schema meets an unfamiliar problem, adaptability is what helps students adjust their approach rather than stall. Anyone who has taught Extension Science knows the key attribute your most successful students possess is adaptability. Being able to pivot when, as usually happens in research, it does not quite pan out the way you first thought it would. It is what sets apart my top student's Research project this year and I'm sure you have seen it too.

Since we found that these two attributes reinforce each other, we have a pathway for improving both. This is helpful because the downwards spiral may be more powerful than the upwards, because resource loss tends to loom larger than gain (Hobfoll et al., 2018). Hence a decline in one may also drag down the other. I am sure you have seen this heartbreaking downwards spiral in your experience.

How can I further build my students' adaptability and buoyancy?

Headline being wrong and setbacks as part of authentic science. People love stories, so include the failures and dead ends. Include that Einstein was initially wrong about features of quantum mechanics. That awesome scientists like Katalin Karikó (whose vital mRNA research was eventually awarded a 2023 Nobel Prize) continued her struggle despite being demoted and having her research initially rejected. Her buoyancy would have kept the Titanic afloat! Or mention the adaptability of Tu Youyou, who eventually gained a Noble in 2015 after countless "ways not to extract artemisinin (qinghaosu)". (Not just Edison who tried many approaches!)

Stunted adaptability characterises those lost in conspiracy theories and other pseudoscience rabbit holes. They are protecting their sense of self and community, but without the orientation of adaptability they lack the capacity to change their mind in a way that protects their sense of identity. Now, more than ever, we need to equip students with these skills, to celebrate (in the words on that Visible Thinking Routine), "I used to think ____, now I think ____. We need to celebrate changing our minds as a result of evidence as a characteristic of a wise person. As algorithms and bad actors weaponise identity as a way of trapping and controlling people, we need our young people's sense of identity to be separate from what they currently believe to be true about testable things.

Aside from History, we can give students real-time experiences to develop these attributes of buoyancy and adaptability (especially changing positions in response to evidence) with the PEEL routine: Predict-Observe-Explain, but with an important caveat about implementation. (I'll develop this idea in a further post).

Teach explicit micro-routines.

• Summary. Law. Rearrange. Substitute. Answer. (a scaffold for science, works for numerical and conceptual questions). Once learned, it can guide students through questions that seem daunting to start with.

• "Circle and return later" to avoid downward spirals, especially in an assessment task. (Martin et al., 2026)

• "Expect the unexpected". Make it the expectation that an examiner will test student skills in a new context.

• Pen down, breathe, reread, underline, sketch, reset. (Martin et al., 2026)

• Domain-specific scaffolds (For instance the skill of drawing, then using a force diagram to predict motion. I am constantly surprised how difficult students find it to truly develop this skill - sure they can draw a diagram, but struggle use it as a scaffold for solving. Again, more on this in the next post)

Normalise challenge and make the dimensions of adaptability visible

• Walk students through how a novel, challenging exam question is solvable with skills they already have. This lowers threat appraisal, which otherwise inhibits adaptability (Putwain et al., 2023; Martin et al., 2026). It reinforces that orientation of "expect the unexpected"

• Pair the above with retrieval practice so the knowledge needed to adapt is actually accessible under pressure — retrieval strengthens durable, transferable memory (Karpicke & Blunt, 2011).

• Build confidence and control (two of the buoyancy "6Cs") by making the pathway from known skills to unknown question visible (Martin, 2026; Martin et al., 2010).

Digging deeper into buoyancy and adaptability

The 6Cs of buoyancy

Strengthen these and buoyancy tends to rise (Martin et al., 2010; Martin, 2026, The Conversation):

• Confidence (self-belief, self-efficacy): belief in one's ability to succeed; broaden "success" to include improvement, not just top marks.

• Coordination (planning): organising and monitoring study and tasks.

• Commitment (persistence): setting clear, achievable goals and working through difficulty.

• Composure (low anxiety): managing worry and staying calm under pressure; the strongest (negative) predictor of the set.

• Control: (empowerment) focusing on what one can influence: effort, strategy, attitude.

• Community: supportive relationships (teachers, peers) that buffer setbacks; the contextual/relational addition to the original five.

A word on Control. It can be liberating for students know that no one should be expecting they achieve "x" level of academic performance, but they can promise parents, significant others, etc, a level of effort. Indeed when "effort" is defined more concretely (such as intentionally using taught strategies or the components in coordination) it becomes far less daunting that a vague "do better" admonition. This can be a helpful conversation for schools to have with their parent and carer body at a global level and in parent-teacher interviews.

Andrew Martin has produced an open-source AI assistant for building buoyancy and adaptability in his GenAI motivational tutor. Each works a student though one of the 11 dimensions of student motivation and engagement, asking questions and offering evidence-based suggestions. It's not going to work with a disengaged student but can be helpful for students who have a positive orientation or intention, but are at a loss as how to make effective changes to their motivation and engagement.

The Anatomy of Adaptability:

The tripartite model of adaptability is not a checklist, but describes three dimensions of adjustment in the face of novelty, change, and uncertainty (Martin et al., 2012, 2013):

• Cognitive adjustment (modifying thinking): reframing a novel situation, considering the opportunity in it, thinking about the problem a new way.

• Behavioural adjustment (modifying actions): seeking new information, people, or resources; changing how one does things to meet new demands.

• Emotional (affective) adjustment (modulating feelings): minimising unhelpful emotions (e.g., frustration) so they don't derail response to change.

Ready for some classroom fun?

The activity I'd like to demonstrate to bring many of these threads together was initially called Predict Observe Explain (POE). In reality it's more like: Predict. Argue. Convince. Observe. Adapt. Many of you will be familiar with using POEs in your classroom, although I am compelled to argue for a change in how we teachers implement these (and other Visible Thinking) strategies. However, this is already longer than it should be - so we will cover this in my next blog.

References

• Anderson, R. C., Beach, P. T., Jacovidis, J. N., & Chadwick, K. L. (2020). Academic buoyancy and resilience for diverse students around the world [Policy paper]. International Baccalaureate Organization.

• Chi, M. T. H. (2008). Three types of conceptual change: Belief revision, mental model transformation, and categorical shift. In S. Vosniadou (Ed.), International handbook of research on conceptual change (pp. 61–82). Routledge.

• Gou, P., Li, W., & Teng, T. (2026). How can scaffolding effectively promote students' problem-solving ability: A meta-analysis. Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 35, 235–248.

• Hobfoll, S. E., Halbesleben, J., Neveu, J.-P., & Westman, M. (2018). Conservation of resources in the organizational context: The reality of resources and their consequences. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 5(1), 103–128.

• Karpicke, J. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772–775.

• Kennett, R., Martin, A. J., Pearson, J., Burns, E. C., & Collie, R. J. (2025). Challenge and threat appraisal of tests in high school: Integrating educational psychology and biopsychology improves understanding of how students take tests. Journal of Educational Psychology, 118(2), 259–274.

• Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75–86.

• Martin, A. J. (2026, July 8). Educational psychology improves use of AI for learning. Psychology Today (PsychEd / APA Division 15).

• Martin, A. J. (2026). School rarely goes to plan. Here are 9 ways students can deal with setbacks and change. The Conversation.

• Martin, A. J., Colmar, S. H., Davey, L. A., & Marsh, H. W. (2010). Longitudinal modelling of academic buoyancy and motivation: Do the 5Cs hold up over time? British Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(3), 473–496.

• Martin, A. J., & Evans, P. (2018). Load reduction instruction: Exploring a framework that assesses explicit instruction through to independent learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 73, 203–214.

• Martin, A. J., Malmberg, L.-E., Holliman, A. J., Teig, N., Putwain, D. W., Collie, R. J., Burns, E. C., Bostwick, K. C. P., Kennett, R., & Pearson, J. (2026). Academic buoyancy and adaptability: A multisample study of reciprocal effects. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication.

• Martin, A. J., & Marsh, H. W. (2008). Academic buoyancy: Towards an understanding of students' everyday academic resilience. Journal of School Psychology, 46(1), 53–83.

• Martin, A. J., Nejad, H., Colmar, S., & Liem, G. A. D. (2012). Adaptability: Conceptual and empirical perspectives on responses to change, novelty and uncertainty. Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 22(1), 58–81.

• Martin, A. J., Nejad, H. G., Colmar, S., & Liem, G. A. D. (2013). Adaptability: How students' responses to uncertainty and novelty predict their academic and non-academic outcomes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(3), 728–746.

• Putwain, D. W., Beaumont, J., & Gallard, D. (2023). Adaptability vs. buoyancy: Which offers the greater protection against test anxiety and could relations be reciprocal? Learning and Individual Differences, 101, Article 102247.

• Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285.

• Sweller, J., & Cooper, G. A. (1985). The use of worked examples as a substitute for problem solving in learning algebra. Cognition and Instruction, 2(1), 59–89.

• Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive load theory. Springer.

• Vosniadou, S. (1994). Capturing and modeling the process of conceptual change. Learning and Instruction, 4(1), 45–69.

• White, R. T., & Gunstone, R. F. (1992). Probing understanding. Falmer Press. [Origin of the Predict–Observe–Explain (POE) technique.]

• White, R. T., & Gunstone, R. F. (1992). Probing understanding. Falmer Press.