A picture is worth a thousand words. The second in a series of visual posts.
The fastest growing area of our work globally lies in the world of Education. To the point we have appointed Steve Oakes as Director of Education to lead our work in this area.
This growth is not a surprise. There is a growing understanding that working with the way young people think is key to their performance their well-being and their approach to life and it all of its challenges.
There are many good ideas out there which help us to understand this. Mindset, Learned Optimism (and its opposite – Learned Helplessness), Grit and Character are some of the most prominent.
The question then is – how does Mental Toughness 4 Cs framework relate to these and what does it add?
The answer to the first is that it maps almost perfectly with all of these ideas and importantly the framework provides a reasonably comprehensive overview of all of these models. There isn’t a need to debate whether its grit, character or mindset, Its all of them embraced by the 4 Cs framework developed by Professor Peter Clough now at MMU in the UK.
The response from users is that the framework is easy to understand and correspondingly easy to use. That’s important. Developing these qualities in young people is important and valuable. Complex or woolly ideas can be very difficult to apply.
Usefully, there is the MTQ48 which is a psychometric measure which helps users to assess in individuals exactly those elements described as the 4 Cs. users can understand their charges more effectively and can support the development of self awareness.
Finally in 2016 AQR International has developed a set of toolkits which are designed in cue card format to enable users to assess students (and staff!!) and to do something about what they discover.
Importantly it all seems to work too!
