Bringing Learning to Life

	Book review on What's the point of school? by Guy Claxton (2009) Reviewed by David Lorimer, 2009 published in Network Review No 101
	(order this book from amazon.co.uk)

Guy Claxton has been active at the interface between psychology and education for many years. In this groundbreaking book, he brings these fields together to propose a new culture for education based on the development of enthusiastic learners rather than students skilled at reproducing content under exam conditions. His starting point is that schools are currently failing students, not only because only 44% reach the target of five A-C grade GCSEs, but also the disaffected attitude towards school among many young people and their deteriorating mental health, as indicated in a number of recent reports. Interestingly, the overall rhetorical framework now contains many sound principles, originally emanating from the Scottish system with its emphasis on the four capacities of successful learners, confident individuals responsible citizens and active contributors. However, the real difficulty is translating these principles into the culture of schools themselves. Guy shows how a century of educational reforms has failed to do this, and that headteachers do not believe that the aims of education are currently being achieved.

Underlying the issues we now face is a series of outdated metaphors of the school as monastery and factory. The second metaphor is the most damaging, as it encourages a production line analysis of education in terms of input and output to the extent that 'the tail of assessment wags the dog of teaching and learning.' In universities, students are now treated as customers on the receiving end of transferable skills. It is all very well to emphasise the role of education in producing a world-class workforce, but this neglects the essential dimension, which is about how to expand the capacities of young people. In this respect, Guy finds models of fixed ability unhelpful in that they classify students instead of focusing on expanding their capacity to learn; this means a shift from a content-driven to a learning-driven approach. Instead of the factory, Guy proposes two new metaphors, that of the Learning Gymnasium and the Exploratory, suggesting that we see education as a form of 'epistemic apprenticeship.' And, even if 'not all are cut out for academic success, all can get better at learning.'

In these new contexts, he puts forward a series of character traits and qualities that can be cultivated by schools: curiosity, courage, exploration and investigation, experimentation, imagination, reasoning, sociability and reflection. These qualities are able to relate the life of the school with real life after school and model ways in which successful learning actually takes place. Prof Joan Rudduck of Cambridge has found that secondary school students are hungry for what she calls the three Rs and the three Cs: responsibility, respect and 'real', and choice, challenge and collaboration. This does not mean solving problems of carefully graded difficulty, as Guy puts it, but rather a challenge to get something useful done, probably in collaboration with other people. Moreover, the sense of satisfaction and happiness is derived from overcoming these kinds of challenges; and I know from my own work that young people admire those whose achievements require vision and perseverance.

As Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning at the University of Winchester, Guy has had a chance to test some of these ideas out in schools, and early results indicate that the change of culture also improves exam performance. Young people themselves are very clear about the kind of school they would like to see, and it corresponds closely with the ideas in this book. In addition, the very force of new technology encourages them to carry out their own research; of course, this has its own dangers of plagiarism, but with the development of the eight qualities students will be able to make good use of Internet resources. The structural obstacle comes in the form of politicians trying to improve the system, which is usually interpreted in terms of content and assessment frameworks rather than fostering the language of learning throughout the education system.

Towards the end of the book, there is a useful chapter of tips for parents to enable their children to become successful learners. Guy warns of the perils of praise, suggesting that we concentrate on effort rather than attainment. He also points out some interesting research findings in the way in which results are interpreted for boys and girls. Boys who are good at maths tend to be told that their results are because they are good at it, while poor performance is taken as an indicator of lack of effort. For girls, however, the remarks receive an 'effort attribution', while low marks are interpreted as a lack of ability. The net effect is that boys tend to improve more, so we really have to be careful about our feedback.

Encouragingly, the book has already been endorsed by many leading educationalists, and one can only hope that ministers and opposition politicians concerned with education will pack this book into their holiday reading. They should heed the warning given by Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commissioner for England, when he asks what is the purpose of education? 'Is it for the attainment of government targets, or is it to provide children with the life skills to become confident adults?' In our fast moving world, we need to take account of the most recent findings in psychology and neuroscience and incorporate these in our models of learning as applied in schools. This brilliant book shows the way, as its subtitle puts it, that we can rediscover the heart of education.

(order this book from amazon.co.uk)