The Learning Power Approach: Teaching learners to teach themselves (The Learning Power series)

In 'The Learning Power Approach: Teaching learners to teach themselves' Guy Claxton sets out the design principles of a way of teaching that aims to strengthen students learning muscles and develop their independence, initiative, determination, and love of learning.

Foreword by Carol S. Dweck.

Learning is learnable! Educators can explicitly teach not just content, knowledge, and skills, but also the positive habits of mind that will better prepare students to flourish both in school and in later life. And as traditionalists fight for rigour and knowledge, and progressives defend the increasing focus on character and well-being, Guy Claxton's 'Learning Power Approach' (LPA) brings resolution to this phoney and unnecessary war by offering teachers a win-win teaching formula that delivers good academic results while simultaneously turbocharging students independence, initiative, and love of learning.

In this groundbreaking book Guy distils fifteen years experience with his influential Building Learning Power method to provide a set of design principles for strengthening students learning muscles, and together with a wealth of practical strategies and the supporting evidence that underpins them details the small tweaks to daily practice that will help teachers attend more closely to the ways in which they can shape their students learning dispositions and attitudes.

Complemented by engaging and informative classroom examples of the LPA in action and drawing from research into the fields of mindset, metacognition, grit, and collaborative learning 'The Learning Power Approach' describes in detail the suite of beliefs, values, attitudes, and habits of mind that go in to making up learning power, and offers a thorough explanation of what its intentions and guiding principles are. Furthermore, in order to help those who are just setting out on their LPA journey, Guy presents teachers with an attractive menu of customisable strategies and activities to choose from as they begin to embed the LPA principles into their own classroom culture, and also includes at the end of each chapter a Wondering section that serves to prompt reflection, conversation, and action among teachers.

Suitable for teachers and leaders in all educational settings,'The Learning Power Approach' carefully lays the groundwork for a series of books to follow that are specifically tailored to primary teaching, secondary teaching, and school leadership.

Chapters include:

1. The Origins of the Learning Power Approach

2. What Is Learning?

3. What Exactly Is the Aim of the Learning Power Approach?

4. How Do I Get Started? Some Quick Wins

5. Why Does Learning Power Matter? Ten Good Reasons for Pumping Those Learning Muscles

6. What Is Learning Power Made of?

7. Learning Power in Action: Some Classroom Illustrations

8. Design Principles of the LPA Classroom

9. What Is the Evidence for the Learning Power Approach?

10. Distinctions and Misconceptions

11. Joining the Culture Club

Guy Claxton is Emeritus Professor at Winchester University and Visiting Professor of Education at King's College London. He has previously taught and researched at Oxford University, Bristol University, and the University of London Institute of Education, and is an internationally renowned cognitive scientist. Guy's books include Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind; Wise Up: The Challenge of Lifelong Learning; The Wayward Mind; and Intelligence in the Flesh. Recent books on education include What's the Point of School?; Building Learning Power; and, with Bill Lucas and others, New Kinds of Smart; The Learning Powered School; and Educating Ruby. Guy's Building Learning Power approach to teaching is widely used in all kinds of schools across the UK, as well as in Poland, Dubai, Indonesia, India, China, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, and Argentina.