Abstract

In educational research, failure has often been touched upon as a by-product, but rarely has failure been investigated without attempting to find ways around it instead of attempting to simply understand it better. This paper provides insight into a pilot study on understanding math failure through narrative. I analyse two pre-service mathematics teachers’ narratives about failure and identity in order to illustrate their personal understandings of their own failures. The analysed stories provide insight into the subjects and their failure resilience, and initiate a discussion on subjective understanding of resilience. These stories also illustrate the need to further research regarding the subjective understandings of failure in general and in math specifically.