What do London’s Royal Albert Hall, The Football Association, and the New Zealand Ministry of Education have in common? All three have called on the services of learning and creativity consultant . He is the author of What’s The Point Of School? Rediscovering The Heart of Education and a foremost thinker on creativity, learning, and the brain. He is Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning at the University of Winchester, and the author of many on learning and creativity, including the best-selling Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Why Intelligence Increases When You Think Less.
Some key points :
Claxton thinks that we need to narrow the gap between typical school learning and the way we actually learn in the world beyond school.
Outside school people watch, copy and adapt what others do. They take the difficult parts and practice them on their own. They choose their own questions and seek out their own teachers. They develop hypotheses and try them out. They imagine possibilities and rehearse them in their head. They write on backs of envelopes and make scratchy notes and reminders. They imagine themselves as better at a particular task, as successful and use this as a guide.
Different people take up different strategies toward achieving what they want to learn and do.
Claxton’s point is that all these tools, methods and strategies are how people learn. And we should talk about them and bring them into the world of school.
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