And when to talk and when to keep silent about their own learning They are good at judiciously balancing sociability with solitariness they are not afraid to go off by themselves when they need to think and digest. 8 Powerful learners are reflective They not only think carefully about the object of their learning they are able to step back and take stock of the process They can say Hold on a minute how are we going about this What assumptions have we been making They will routinely mull over their own modus operandi and consider alternative strategies and possibilities They somehow know when these moments of taking stock are useful.
Guy Claxton is Emeritus Professor of the Learning Sciences at the University of Winchester His many publications include Hare Brain Tortoise Mind Why Intelligence Increases When You Think Less He lives in the UK. 
It s been a while since I ve read an educational book cover to cover and highlighted it till it glowsbut my copy of this book is now glowing blue Claxton from the UK is not selling a program or suggesting spending money on any curriculum Instead he believes that we need to shift our approach and beliefs about learning in our schools It is our job to help kids learn how to learn He believes this is best achieved by setting up the school to be Learning Gyms where adults and students are keenly aware of the habits of mind they need to be a powerful learner vs a successful student He notes that adults need to model their own learning and struggle with it Powerful learners know how to grapple with issues ideas They know when to read a manual what questions to ask when to take a break when to call someone else how to persist and continue through the messiness of it Claxton notes that some experiences leave a residue that opens us up makes us courageous and resilient questioning and imaginative And some close us down p 113 I dream of a school like thisone that is filled completely with teachers and learners who understand that we are ALL teachers and learners One that sees learning as apprenticeships and fires kids up with the deep satisfaction of discovery and exploration When reading this book I was reminded of one of the most interesting workshop titles I have ever seen Kids are question marks let s keep it that way If we do we will teach them to be true learners and prepare them well for the world in which they will one day work 1851686037 Finally I rate this book 4 stars even though I really amazed with the content of this book There is no problem with this book as it stimulate me to think and reflect upon what I have done why I did it and what is my plan as a teacher with my professional judgement How I found Guy Claxton as an inspiring person I found him when I reflected on my journey as a learner during my schooling time There was a time when I resigned from a boarding school in order to prove that 1 school prestige is not the sole indicator of my future 2 An excellent examination result cannot guarantee us a bright future Indeed what I thought in my schooling time has been proven by him and the word that fit with my thought is resilience. Anyway the past is the past This inspiring book that stimulated my critical thought can be just a book that has 244 pages if I don t have any critical creative practices A good thought may become a random idea if a person don t have creative practice 1851686037 tegelikult on see hea raamat mis r gib ppmisest ja sellest kuidas kooli m te peaks olema petada ppima sest see tagaks et lapsed oleksid r msamad t iskasvanud targemad ja l ppkokkuv ttes ka eksamitulemused paremad. lihtsalt siin ei olnud mu jaoks palju uut ikka needsamad gretearrod ja jaanarud on meile k ik need asjad juba ra seletanud pluss eks selle olen ka ise lahti hammustanud et suur osa koolis pitavaid fakte on kas kasutud v i puha valed ja neid peabki ppima lihtsalt ppimise p rast aga sellisel juhul v iks see v hemalt olla mingi korralik ppimine ja veel toredam oleks ju ppida mingeid toredaid asju kui p hipoint on ppimise harjutamine. ja jube pikalt veedeti alguses aega praeguse hariduse h dade lesloetlemisel tugeva r huga Suurbritannia koolis steemil see oli k ll p ris abiks ses m ttes et seletas lahti k ik l bi aegade kasutusel olnud eksamite ja koolit pide nimed ja tausta noh k ik need eleven plussid ja grammar schoolid ja CSEd ja GCSEd ja A levelid ja O levelid ja mis nad siin on aga kui ise selles riigis ei ela siis see osa v ib k ll p ris t tu olla ja hirmus pikalt ja palju r giti ikkagi sellest kui halvad on eksamitulemused ja kui kurvad on lapsed ja kuidas l puks on maailm t is inimesi kes on oma elust mituteist aastat ra raisanud ja pole suurt midagi ppinud k ik ige aga ma tean ja ma ei viitsinud seda lugeda. ja mind j i t iega h irima et ldse ei tulnud arutluse kooli mitte segi ajada haridusega tegelik m te mis on ikkagi see et lapsed tuleb kuidagi letalve ra hoida seda mis saab kui koolid kinni panna ja p da niisama haridust anda suht hiljuti ka ju k ik n gime ok Claxtoni raamat on enne seda kirjutatud 1851686037 This was great I m not sure how much of it was new to me but it was nice to have it all in one place Reading it on the train on the way to school meant I immediately changed one of my maths lessons for that day with great results Found it inspiring 1851686037 Claxton s thesis is simple industrial education isn t working and in fact is teaching kids compliance and passivity what s needed is a focus on teaching kids how to learn This isn t news here in NZ though it might be elsewhere The first part of the book lays out the problem with plenty of quotes from real people. At a conference recently a headteacher approached me keen to tell me a story The previous evening she had been chatting to her daughter a bright young woman doing some last minute revision for her A levels She asked her daughter what she thought she had really learned from her schooldays The daughter thought for a bit and said Be nice to the hard kids Her mother suggested that there must be than that The daughter thought some and then said Yes I ve learned I m not very clever Telling me this story the headteacher said And I could have wept She thought it was a tragedy that this perfectly intelligent young woman should think that a sense of her own inadequacy was the second most important thing she would take away from her education. andThe findings of a MORI poll carried out for the Campaign for Learning in 2000 2002 and 2004 could reveal part of the problem The poll asked over two thousand 11 16 year olds to name the three most common activities in their classrooms Number one across all three surveys was copying from a board or a book selected by an average of 60% of the sample It is worth noting that the situation is actually deteriorating as copying down rose from 56% in 2000 to 61% in 2004 Two of the other most common activities were listen to the teacher talking for a long time and take notes while my teacher talks The least likely thing to happen in a classroom according to the students surveyed was learn things that relate to the real world. As long ago as 1856 educational reformer Joseph Payne was deploring the habit of incessant testing of as he put it continually pulling up the plants to see the condition of the roots the consequence of which is that all good natural growth was stopped. In many ways the history is the saddest part Everyone with kids pays attention to school while their kids are in school and few realize that it s been messed up for years Claxton describes a project where kids were asked what their ideal school would be like The school I d like would be one whose primary aim was teaching me how to live Today academic knowledge has become the sole interest of many schools and few teachers are daring enough to abandon the exam rat race for the job of creating thinking adult individuals Christa sixteen. Just as a subject has become absorbing and interesting it is locked away until the next lesson and the mind is switched to a new wavelength for the next subject This continual interruption makes the work boring and the pupil loses interest In tomorrow s school the work will be continued until it is finished Janet sixteen. The people who write textbooks do not make mistakes and the best way to learn is by your own mistakes Jennifer fifteen I don t think I would get on very well in my ideal school because I am too used to being told what to do Frances fifteen And finally here is Kirsty aged seven bursting with good ideas despite some bad spelling I wold like a school that some times let you writ out work for other children in other schools i think as I am a child that I now how other children feel and so I can make it eseyer for them I think it wold be nice if we cold sugest things for ourselvs to do id like us to have natur lessons out side and id prefer not to keep together as animals don t come out wen thers lots of peopel. As Claxton observes the voices of these young people are entirely contemporary yet they are drawn from entries to a competition in The Observer newspaper in 1967 That horrified me these were written by kids of my father s generation and things aren t substantially better today. Claxton is skeptical of brain friendly learning and the fad for mind maps learning styles multiple intelligence profiles etc As American neuroscientist David Fitzpatrick said recently Anything that people would say about the brain right now has a good chance of not being true two years from now because the understanding is so rudimentary and people are looking at things at such a simplistic level. I loved this dichotomy between British public schools what the rest of the world calls private schools and comprehensives what the rest of the world calls public schools Traditionalists rather like the idea that education is character forming but the particular qualities of character beloved of the old public and grammar schools are no longer appropriate and need updating Cultivating the qualities of leadership and moral fibre used to be the core purpose of education in the old public schools They saw their job as producing the leaders of the future the generals the chairmen of boards the cabinet ministers the newspaper editors the bishops Through sports and team captaincy the house system debating societies prefect ship and so on pupils were coached in how to take responsibility organise other people play by the rules own up and the skills of collecting and collating information marshaling clear and cogent case and expressing their views on paper They were continually coached not just in how to do these things but in the value and importance of them This tradition continued somewhat diluted in the grammar schools. In parallel in the state schools pupils were being taught the basics of the three Rs But they too were having their characters moulded At its worst the ethos of many elementary schools invited and rewarded only displays of diligence attentiveness politeness deference to authority punctuality and accurate recapitulation of what had been taught These follower virtues of the working man and woman were less talked about than the public school virtues for obvious reasons The working classes did not need to know that their education was designed to make them uncomplaining and accurate doers of others bidding The fact that some of them worked this out for themselves and that a great many of their grandchildren now show their disaffection with such a model shows an upsurge of resistance to an anachronistic and demeaning system. The money shot for me in the book was Claxton s description of a good learner I think he hit every aspect on the head when he reduced it to eight qualities 1 Powerful learners are curious As we saw in the last chapter children are born curious They are drawn to learning They like to engage with things that are new and puzzling within limits They meet the world with an attitude of what s that and that s odd Learners like to wonder about things how they come to be how they work They are open minded looking for new interests and perspectives They like to get below the surface of things to go deeper in their understanding They know how to ask good pertinent productive questions and they enjoy the process of wondering and questioning Curious people can be challenging they may not take yes for an answer They may be healthily sceptical about what they see and are told. 2 Confident learners have courage They are not afraid of uncertainty and complexity They have the confidence to say I don t know which is always the precursor to Let s find out They are up for a challenge willing to take a risk to try something they are not yet sure how to do Given the choice they would rather learn than merely show off how good they already are Courageous learners can stick with things that are difficult even when they get frustrated They are determined in their learning and can put in hours of hard graft when needs be They can bounce back from mistakes they don t stay floored for long They have what sports coaches call mental toughness Mistakes are for learning from not for getting upset about They are patient and persistent but they can also give up on things not because they are afraid of failing or looking stupid but because they genuinely reappraise the need to know. 3 Powerful learners are good at exploration and investigation They like finding things out They are good at seeking and gathering information They are enthusiastic researchers That can mean reading and thinking and note taking but it can also mean attending carefully and mindfully to situations taking time if needs be not jumping to conclusions letting a situation speak to them They know how to concentrate they can easily get lost in their inquiries They like and are good at sifting and evaluating what they see and hear and read they develop a trust in their abilities to tell good evidence Explorers are also good at finding making and capitalising on resources that will help them pursue their projects tools places source of information other people They are opportunistic alive to new possibilities and resources that crop up along the way. 4 Powerful learning requires experimentation This is the virtue of the practical inventor and the ingenious inveterate tinkerer They like to try things out sometimes to see if they work sometimes just to see what happens They like adjusting things tuning their skills and looking for small improvements They enjoy looking at their work in progress a garden bed an essay a guitar riff and seeing how they can redraft and revise it They know how to do good practice and how to extract the most learning from their experience They say Let s try and What if They like messing about with interesting material mud footballs PhotoShop friends to uncover the potential of materials situations and people They know how to prod things to get them to reveal themselves They are happy to try different approaches to mess things up make mistakes if they are not too costly and if they think they might be informative 5 Powerful learners have imagination They know how to use the creative test bed of their own inner worlds to generate and explore possibilities They know the value of running mental simulations of tricky situations to see how they might behave They are also good at mental rehearsal practising and smoothing their own performances in their mind s eye They know when and how to make use of reverie how to let ideas come to them But they have a mixture of respect and scepticism toward their own hunches intuitions and Feelings of rightness They give some credence to these feelings but also know they need testing and checking out They like finding links and making connections inside their own minds and they use a lot of imagery analogy and metaphor in their own thinking They know when and how to put themselves in other people s shoes to look at the world from perspectives that are not their own natural ones. 6 The creativity of imagination needs to be yoked to reason and discipline the ability to think carefully rigorously and methodically to analyse and evaluate as well as to take the imaginative leap Powerful learners are good at hard thinking they are able to construct and follow rigorous trains of thought They ask How come and are good at creating explanations that are clear enough to lead to fresh ideas or predictions They have the ability to and the disposition to spot the holes in their own arguments as well as other people s Disciplined learners can create plans and forms of structure and organisation that support their learning they know how and when to be methodical but they stay open to serendipity and are perfectly willing to think again or change their plan if needs be Disciplined thinking enables knowledge and skill to be used to guide learning to allow the painstaking process of crafting things balancing the creative brainwaves. They are happy collaborating and are good at sharing ideas suggestions and resources They are good members of groups of explorers but than that they can help groups of people become really effective learning and problem solving teams They have the knack of being able to give their views and hold their own in debate and at the same time stay open minded They can give feedback and suggestions skilfully and receive them graciously They are keen to pick up useful perspectives and strategies from others But they are also socially discerning Effective learners seem to know who to talk to and who not and they don t get stuck in the trap of of being over reflective too analytical or self critical Good learners are self aware interested in contemplating their own habits strengths and weaknesses as they go about learning and able to think strategically about how they can become even stronger and well rounded in their approach They have a rich vocabulary for talking about the process of learning for example when and how they learn different kinds of things best and also about themselves as developing learners They see themselves as continually growing in their learning power and capacity They don t get stuck in a view of themselves as bright or average. That s something for me to reread every month and see how I m doing It s how I d like to be how I d like my kids to be how I d like employees and coworkers to be That was the high point of the book for me though Claxton has only a few suggestions of how to implement this they resemble the inquiry learning that s at the heart of the NZ curriculum and now mandatory in all primary schools But what a high point I strongly recommend this book it s clearly written in plain English lays out an excellent case and will change the way you see the schools around you 1851686037
| Whats the Point of School?: Rediscovering the Heart of Education By Guy Claxton |
| 1851686037 |
| 9781851686032 |
| 224 |
| Paperback |