Navigating Exam Pressure: The Four Circles of Influence
As our Grade 6, Grade 9, and Form 4 students gear up for their national assessments and examinations, it’s a crucial time to focus their energy effectively. The Four Circles Model is a powerful framework that offers clear guidance on managing stress and prioritising action.
This model expands on traditional thinking to help students and teachers determine where they should invest their limited time and mental energy.
The Four Circles Model Applied to Kenyan Education
1. Circle of Control (Act) 🎯
This is the innermost and most powerful circle. It includes everything a student can directly and completely control through their actions and choices. This is where proactive students dedicate their focus.
- Action: Act
- Examples:
- Revision Timetable: Creating and sticking to a personal, realistic daily or weekly revision schedule.
- Effort: The number of hours spent studying, and the quality of that effort (active recall, practice exams).
- Attitude: Maintaining a positive, growth-oriented mindset towards challenging subjects.
- Well-being: Getting adequate sleep, nutrition, and exercise.
2. Circle of Influence (Adapt & Collaborate) 🤝
This circle represents things you can affect or impact through communication, persuasion, or indirect actions. You can’t control these things directly, but you can work to affect the outcome.
- Action: Adapt, collaborate, and exert influence.
- Examples:
- Relationships: Seeking help from a specific teacher for a difficult topic.
- Study Groups: Collaborating with classmates to share notes and explain concepts.
- Home Environment: Politely communicating the need for a quiet study space at home during exam season.
- School Procedures: Providing constructive feedback to a class representative that might improve lesson delivery for the whole class.
3. Circle of Escape (Avoid or Move Away) 🚪
This circle is for factors you cannot control or influence, but that are tied to a specific context you can leave. You have the ability to move away from these situations to avoid their negative impact.
- Action: Avoid or move away.
- Examples:
- Negative Peers: Choosing to spend less time with classmates who are consistently distracting, negative, or discouraging.
- Toxic Spaces: Moving your study spot away from a noisy or distracting common area, such as a busy dining hall or common room.
- Bad Habits: Stepping away from excessive, time-wasting social media use or gaming during the critical revision period.
4. Circle of Concern (Accept) 🌍
The outermost circle contains all the broad issues and situations that concern you but are entirely outside your direct control or influence. Worrying about these things is a common trait of reactive people.
- Action: Accept and let go.
- Examples:
- National Policies: Changes to the national curriculum or the overall structure of the new curriculum (CBC).
- Assessment Standards: The marking schemes or the difficulty level of the national exams.
- Global Events: The state of the economy or international affairs.
- The Weather: Worrying that heavy rain will disrupt travel to the exam centre.
Three Steps to Effective Prioritisation
This framework’s power lies in its simplicity. Here is the call to action for every student:
- List Your Concerns: Write down everything that is causing worry, frustration, or fear about the upcoming exams.
- Categorise: Assign each item to one of the four circles (Control, Influence, Escape, or Concern).
- Prioritise: Now you know where each issue lies, you can apply the appropriate action:
- ACT on what you can control (your revision).
- INFLUENCE what you can (your support network).
- AVOID what you can escape (distractions).
- ACCEPT what you cannot change (national policies).
By focusing their energy inward, our students can transform anxiety into productive action. Good luck to all our candidates! 🇰🇪
Mutheu Kasanga
Email 📧 me@mutheukasanga.africa
Website: www.mutheukasanga.africa