Clear expectations
Explain what learners will practise, what they must demonstrate and how prior learning will be considered.
The Institute for Adult Development · Our purpose
Why an IAD qualification?
A developmental purpose needs developmental standards.
We are establishing our own NLP-to-CDT qualification so that what we teach, what practitioners demonstrate and what the award recognises follow the same developmental purpose.
Why create a distinct qualification?
The curriculum and the award should serve the same purpose.
Our aim is to educate practitioners who can examine how meaning is constructed and help people develop usable awareness, choice and response. That purpose shapes the methods we retain, the way we teach them and the evidence we seek.
Dr Darren Stevens’ Constructed Development Theory supplies the organising developmental theory. NLP-adjacent practices provide material to examine and use where they serve that purpose.
A qualification built around this approach needs to recognise more than coverage of a catalogue of techniques. It needs to examine how a practitioner selects an intervention, responds to the person and revises their own interpretation.
Creating an IAD qualification allows us to make those requirements explicit and take responsibility for the resulting award. Independence is a responsibility to explain and examine our standards.
What CDT changes
From applying a method to making a developmental judgement.
Construction becomes part of the inquiry.
CDT asks how a person constructs self, other, problem and context. The practitioner checks that account with the person. An apparent pattern remains a hypothesis, and the person’s correction can change the next move.
The same scrutiny applies to the practitioner: what have I assumed, what am I inviting through my language, and what would make me reconsider?
Availability guides the intervention.
Dynamic Intelligence is the capacity to construct self-awareness in the moment between Intention and Response. Explaining alternatives after an event is different from noticing a construction early enough to choose and enact another response.
We therefore ask which next movement the person can use. A practical clarification may fit better than a deeper exercise. Complexity of explanation alone does not establish developmental availability.
The educational proposition
Teach the judgement that makes a method appropriate, and examine what happens when it is used.
This is how we intend CDT to extend and reconstruct useful NLP practices throughout the pathway.
What counts as evidence?
Time provides an opportunity. Practice provides evidence.
Learning needs time and support.
Teaching, rehearsal and feedback create opportunities to develop. Attendance records and study hours can describe those opportunities. They cannot, by themselves, establish the quality of a practitioner’s judgement or response.
We distinguish a proposed question, a supported attempt, an independently observed exchange and a report of later use. Each can contribute, provided its source and limits are clear.
Capability must become observable.
Relevant evidence includes agreeing purpose, distinguishing observation from inference, checking meaning, selecting fitting support, accepting correction and adapting when new information arrives.
A successful classroom exercise supports a bounded claim about that encounter. Further observation and evidence of later use may be needed before a wider claim is justified. A certificate should reflect the evidence actually reviewed.
What independence requires
The IAD must make its own standards examinable.
Our intended route is an IAD-issued qualification governed by IAD standards. We are not seeking to make an external organisation’s syllabus the organising authority for this pathway. We can retain, revise or omit content according to its fit with our educational purpose.
That freedom brings obligations. Before enrolment, learners need clear entry expectations, assessment criteria, evidence requirements, assessor responsibilities, feedback arrangements and a route for reviewing disputed decisions. The award’s scope must also be explicit.
The teaching packs and proposed assessment aids have been drafted for author review and pilot delivery. They provide material for testing and refining those arrangements; they do not silently replace the IAD’s existing competencies or establish final award policy.
Traceable judgements
Connect assessment decisions to observed evidence, recording support, uncertainty and what still needs to be demonstrated.
Reviewable decisions
Make feedback and review arrangements clear, including how a learner can question a judgement.
Continuing evaluation
Use pilot delivery, learner experience and practice evidence to examine the curriculum and assessment design.
What the qualification means
An IAD award with a defined scope.
The intended recognition
The pathway comprises a twelve-workshop Diploma foundation and an eight-workshop Practitioner stage. The intended Practitioner award is IAD NLP Practitioner, taught through Darren Stevens’ CDT and Dynamic Intelligence approach.
Completing the teaching sequence and meeting the requirements for an award are separate decisions. Final award wording and requirements will be confirmed by the IAD before enrolment.
Boundaries of the award
This is an IAD qualification. It does not claim ANLP or INLPTA accreditation, statutory professional status or equivalence to a regulated academic qualification.
It does not grant clinical or psychotherapy qualifications, trainer authorisation, or AQ/TQ assessment rights. Learning CDT terminology does not establish a developmental level.
A commitment to honest claims
An original approach remains open to examination.
CDT originates in Darren Stevens’ doctoral research and subsequent theoretical development. This pathway applies that work to practitioner education. The rationale for the course is a theoretical and educational argument; comparative effectiveness and durable developmental outcomes require evaluation.
Establishing our own qualification does not itself prove that the course produces better practitioners. Our task is to define what we mean by better practice, collect appropriate evidence and remain willing to revise our teaching and assessment.
Explore the research foundation → Read the current AQ evidence status →
Explore the learning
See how the purpose becomes practice.
Explore the Diploma and Practitioner workshops, or contact the IAD to discuss your experience and learning aims.