The Study of non-Cognitive Attributes in Education: Proposing the Mental Toughness Framework

This review focuses on the concept of mental toughness and the extent to which it may provide a useful framework to study the role of non-cognitive attributes within an educational setting. In doing so, it reviews past research examining mental toughness across different domains (e.g. sport, occupation, education), the extent to which mental toughness aligns with concepts commonly studied within education (i.e. resilience, buoyancy, perseverance, self-efficacy, confidence and motivation), advantages to using a mental toughness framework within education and suggestions for future research.