Guy Claxton

In these accelerated times, our decisive and businesslike ways of thinking are unprepared for ambiguity, paradox, and sleeping on it." We assume that the quick-thinking "hare brain" will beat out the slower Intuition of the "tortoise mind." However, now research in cognitive science is changing this understanding of the human mind. It suggests that patience and confusion--rather than rigor and certainty--are the essential precursors of wisdom. With a compelling argument that the mind works best when we trust our unconscious, or "undermind," psychologist Guy Claxton makes an appeal that we be less analytical and let our creativity have free rein. He also encourages reevaluation of society's obsession with results-oriented thinking and problem-solving under pressure. Packed with Interesting anecdotes, a dozen puzzles to test your reasoning, and the latest related research, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind is an Illuminating, uplifting, stimulating read that focuses on a new kind of well-being and cognition.

How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less

Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind

"If you think that intelligence emanates from the mind and that reasoning necessitates the suppression of emotion, you'd better think again--or rather not 'think' at all. In his provocative new book, Guy Claxton draws on the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology to reveal how our bodies--long dismissed as mere conveyances--actually constitute the core of our intelligent life. From the endocrinal means by which our organs communicate to the instantaneous decision-making prompted by external phenomena, our bodies are able to perform intelligent computations that we either overlook or wrongly attribute to our brains. Embodied intelligence is one of the most exciting areas in contemporary philosophy and neuropsychology, and Claxton shows how the privilege given to cerebral thinking has taken a toll on modern society, resulting in too much screen time, the diminishment of skilled craftsmanship, and an overvaluing of white-collar over blue-collar labor. Discussing techniques that will help us reconnect with our bodies, Claxton shows how an appreciation of the body's intelligence will enrich all our lives."--

why your mind needs your body much more than it thinks

Intelligence in the flesh

Attempting to convey the spirit of Buddhism in its most rational, practical and mundane form this book offers a way for normal healthy people to become more healthy and explains that when the simple belief is properly understood the vast range of practices and doctrines begin to make sense.

Practical Wisdom for an Agitated World

The Heart of Buddhism

Bill Lucas

Tanya Byron

Octavius Black

With forewords by Professor Tanya Byron and Octavius Black, Educating Ruby: What Our Children Really Need To Learn is a powerful call to action by acclaimed thought-leaders Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas. It is for everyone who cares about education in an uncertain world and explains how teachers, parents and grandparents can cultivate confidence, curiosity, collaboration, communication, creativity, commitment and craftsmanship in children, at the same time as helping them to do well in public examinations. Educating Ruby shows, unequivocally, that schools can get the right results in the right way, so that the Rubys of tomorrow will emerge from their time at school able to talk with honest pleasure and reflective optimism about their schooling. Featuring the views of schoolchildren, parents, educators and employers and drawing on Guy Claxton and Bill Lucas' years of experience in education, including their work with Building Learning Power and the Expansive Education Network, this powerful new book is sure to provoke thinking and debate. Just as Willy Russell's Educating Rita helped us rethink university, the authors of Educating Ruby invite fresh scrutiny of our schools.

What our children really need to learn

Educating Ruby

It’s time for the educational slugfest to stop. ‘Traditional’ and ‘progressive’ education are both caricatures, and bashing cartoon images of each other is unprofitable and unedifying. The search for a new model of education – one that is genuinely empowering for all young people – is serious and necessary. Some good progress has already been made, but teachers and school leaders are being held back by specious beliefs, false oppositions and the limited thinking of orthodoxy. Drawing on recent experience in England, North America and Australasia, but applicable round the world, The Future of Teaching clears away this logjam of bad science and slack thinking and frees up the stream of much-needed innovation. This timely book aims to banish arguments based on false claims about the brain and poor understanding of cognitive science, reclaim the nuanced middle ground of teaching that develops both rigorous knowledge and ‘character’, and lay the foundations for a 21st-century education worthy of the name.

And the Myths That Hold It Back

The Future of Teaching

With their emphasis on regurgitated knowledge and stressful exams, today’s schools actually do more harm than good. Guiding readers past the sterile debates about City Academies and dumbed-down exams, Claxton proves that education’s key responsibility should be to create enthusiastic learners who will go on to thrive as adults in a swiftly-changing, dynamic world. Students must be encouraged to sharpen their wits, ask questions, and think for themselves - all without chucking out Shakespeare or the Periodic Table. Blending down-to-earth examples with the latest advances in brain science, and written with passion, wit, and authority, this brilliant book will inspire teachers, parents, and readers of all backgrounds to join a practical revolution and foster in the next generation a natural curiosity and the spirit of adventure.

Rediscovering the Heart of Education

What's the Point of School?

The unconscious has had a long and chequered history. For at least the last 4,000 years, societies have concocted comforting fables in the face of the recurrent puzzles of human existence - death, dreaming, madness, possession, inspiration - that invariably rely on some notion of the unconscious. Supernatural 'fairy stories' need some internal proxy or contact point through which the influence of demons and spirits can flow. And without such gods and forces, some psychological machinery is needed to take over their work. But what IS the unconscious? Is it 'God's viceroy', the soul? Is it the locked ward of Freudian desire? Is the subliminal mind the source of the sublime emotions of the Romantics? Is is the mental microchip of cognitive science? Or is it simply the brain?

An Intimate History of the Unconscious

The Wayward Mind

Rachel Macfarlane

Graham Powell

Jann Robinson

Gemma Goldenberg

Robert Cleary

Powering Up Your School: The Learning Power Approach to school leadership - co-authored by Guy Claxton, Jann Robinson, Rachel Macfarlane, Graham Powell, Gemma Goldenberg, and Robert Cleary - is a treasury of top tips on how to embed the Learning Power Approach (LPA) in your school culture and empower your teachers to deliver its benefits to students. The LPA is a way of teaching which aims to develop all students as confident and capable learners ready, willing, and able to choose, design, research, pursue, troubleshoot, and evaluate learning for themselves, alone and with others, in school and out. This approach also affords a clear view of valued, sought-after outcomes of education - such as the development of character strengths and the pursuit of academic success - and Powering Up Your School sets out a detailed explanation of how these can be accomplished. It distils into a series of illuminating case studies the lessons learned by a wide range of pioneering school principals who have successfully undertaken the LPA journey, and presents a variety of practical strategies which will enable school leaders to make a positive impact on the lives of both their staff and their students. These strategies are complemented by a wealth of insights into how school leaders can go about gaining clarity on their vision, achieve buy-in from staff, and foster a collaborative effort towards delivering good outcomes. Together the authors share their tips on how to adapt and refine school structures and teaching practices on a school-wide level, and on how to stimulate and celebrate student progress. They also provide specific ideas for charting and reflecting on the journey towards building a learning-powered culture, framed in an appendix in the form of a detailed self-assessment grid. Suitable for school leaders in both primary and high school settings. Powering Up Your School is the fourth instalment in the Learning Power series.

The Learning Power Approach to school leadership (The Learning Power series)

Powering Up Your School

Howard Gardner

Anna Craft

An international panel of distinguished experts explores the balance between creativity and wise action, and calls for educators to nurture "wise creativity" in their students.

Exploring the Role of Education

Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship

Helping Young People Become Better Learners

Building Learning Power

Maryl Chambers

Find out what the pioneers have been doing, and how it is transforming their schools. Eight years on from the classic Building Learning Power, Professor Claxton and his co-authors show how the ideas and practice have grown and flourished.

Pioneering 21st Century Education

The Learning Powered School

Terry Atkinson

This volume investigates, both conceptually and empirically, the role of intuition in professional practice and its significance for professional development, especially within the world of education. The relationship between rationale or explicit ways of knowing and learning and inarticulate, intuitive or implicit ones is explored in the context of professional practice and development. The tendency to interpret reflection solely in terms of articulation is questioned and the value of other forms of reflection is reasserted. The working relationship between reason and intuition is illustrated in a variety of case studies in distinctive educational and professional settings. From this reassessment of intuition, practical lessons for the initial training and continuing professional development of educators and others are highlighted and extracted.

On the Value of Not Always Knowing what One is Doing

The Intuitive Practitioner

A Direction for Education

Teaching to Learn

Gordon Wells

United by the belief that the most significant factor in shaping the minds of young people is the cultural setting in which learning takes place, the twenty eminent contributors to this volume present new thinking on education across the boundaries of school, home, work and community.

Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education

Learning for Life in the 21st Century

Becky Carlzon

In Powering Up Children: The Learning Power Approach to primary teaching, Guy Claxton and Becky Carlzon harness the design principles of the Learning Power Approach (LPA) to provide a rich resource of effective teaching strategies for use in the primary school classroom. Foreword by Ron Berger. The LPA is a way of teaching which aims to develop all children as confident and capable learners ready, willing, and able to choose, design, research, pursue, troubleshoot, and evaluate learning for themselves, alone and with others, in school and out. This approach therefore empowers teachers to complement their delivery of content, knowledge, and skills with the nurturing of positive habits of mind that will better prepare students to flourish in later life. Building upon the foundations carefully laid in The Learning Power Approach (ISBN 9781785832451), the first book in the Learning Power series, Guy Claxton and Becky Carlzon's Powering Up Children embeds the ideas of this influential method in the context of the primary school. It offers a thorough explanation of how the LPA's design principles apply to this level of education and, by presenting a wide range of practical strategies and classroom examples, illustrates how they can be put into action with different age groups and in different curricular areas especially relating to literacy and numeracy, but also in specific subjects such as science, history, art, and PE. Bursting with tips and techniques to get students' learning muscles stretching from a young age, the book is designed for busy primary school teachers who want to get started on the LPA journey as well as for those who have already made good progress and are looking for fresh ideas. The central chapters are structured around thematic clusters of the LPA's design principles, and follow a common format: 1. First, the authors explain why the design principles focused on are important; including what's in it for the teacher and what's in it for the children. 2. Next, they offer a menu of practical low-risk tweaks to classroom practice that enable teachers to engage with the design principles and experience some quick wins. 3. Then they provide some ideas about how to embed the principles more deeply in the ongoing life of the classroom including some rich lesson examples from across the primary age range, and from different school subjects. 4. Finally, they address some of the common bumps and issues that may crop up along the way, and offer advice to help teachers overcome such potential obstacles. Suitable for both newly qualified and experienced teachers of learners aged 3 to 11.

The Learning Power Approach to primary teaching (The Learning Power series)

Powering Up Children

Writing principally for teachers-in-training and for new teachers, Guy Claxton offers a fresh approach to what is often a stuffy and polemical area. New teachers today are being bombarded from all sides with advice, prescriptions and demands about what they ought to be, and about personal and professional standards they ought to attain. The person they are gets to feel more and more ignored, unvalued and inadequate. The message of The Little Ed Book is that the answers to all the questions a teacher must confront – both practical and ideological – are already within him or her, and that, whatever they are, they are worthy of respect. Just as a map of a city is useless unless you can locate yourself, so you must find and value the teacher that you are, before you can become the teacher you can be.

The Little Ed Book

If you think that intelligence emanates from the mind and that reasoning necessitates the suppression of emotion, you’d better think again—or rather not “think” at all. In his provocative new book, Guy Claxton draws on the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology to reveal how our bodies—long dismissed as mere conveyances—actually constitute the core of our intelligent life. From the endocrinal means by which our organs communicate to the instantaneous decision-making prompted by external phenomena, our bodies are able to perform intelligent computations that we either overlook or wrongly attribute to our brains. Embodied intelligence is one of the most exciting areas in contemporary philosophy and neuropsychology, and Claxton shows how the privilege given to cerebral thinking has taken a toll on modern society, resulting in too much screen time, the diminishment of skilled craftsmanship, and an overvaluing of white-collar over blue-collar labor. Discussing techniques that will help us reconnect with our bodies, Claxton shows how an appreciation of the body’s intelligence will enrich all our lives.

Why Your Mind Needs Your Body Much More Than It Thinks

Intelligence in the Flesh

The processes involved in creative thought seem mysterious and can often elude us. Yet the ability to think creatively and productively is vital to our personal and professional lives.Creativity is a major economic force in the 21st century and an essential part of everyday life. Being smart in today's world means we have to be flexible to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Demands upon us can change daily, our personal circumstances alter and the markets within which we operate shift. To achieve harmony, balance and success through all this constant change we need to think creatively. But how do we do this? How do we know which skills and habits will directly increase and impact on our ability to think creatively? And how can we develop and nurture them? In this comprehensive full-colour guide the authors help us to advance our skills to meet the challenges we face in our daily lives in an innovative and creative way. Learn how you can strengthen and develop the attitudes that enable creativity, break those that stifle innovation and discover the techniques you need to draw out your positive and creative side. Through practical exercises and inspiring examples you'll instil a positive mind-set that will make innovative, productive and creative thinking a way of life. Take on new challenges and projects with confidence and find out how to create a creative and stimulating environment within your workplace. This book is for anyone who wants to tap into their creativity and develop a mind-set where good ideas flow more freely in all circumstances, reaping the benefits that creative and innovative thought can offer.

How to Generate Ideas and Solve Problems in Your Work and Life

The Creative Thinking Plan

This classic Buddhist title explains why Buddhism is now so appropriate to our personal, social and global situation.

Guy Claxton

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