ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the challenges in the real world and how an understanding of mental toughness might help. Areas that relate to mental toughness include: dealing with stress; optimising and understanding the learning environment and dealing with change. Teaching is widely recognised as being one of the most stressful jobs. HSE research in 2000 found teaching to be the most stressful profession in the UK, with forty-one and a half per cent of teachers reporting themselves as "highly stressed". Bullying and being bullied are major issues in any educational environment. There are many excellent ideas and techniques to help maximise the learning experience. However many of these share a central problem—they fail to fully take into account individual difference. Change is ever present in education. Mentally tough individuals tend to crave change and can become easily bored with routine.
