Building Learning Power

“Building Learning Power is an approach to helping young people to become better learners, both in school and out.” Professor Guy Claxton

guy claxtonGuy Claxton is emeritus Professor of the Learning Sciences at the University of Winchester, a post he took up in September 2008 together with the role of Co-Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning (CrL). His practical ideas about how to expand young people’s appetite and capacity for learning have influenced educational theory and practice across the world. Building Learning Power is about helping young people become better learners, developing their learning power and preparing them for a lifetime love of learning. At St John’s we develop the children’s learning character and habits in four areas:
Reciprocity – being ready, willing and able to learn alone and with others

  • Interdependence
  • Collaboration
  • Empathy and listening
  • Imitation

Resilience – being ready, willing and able to lock on to learning

  • Absorption
  • Managing distractions
  • Noticing
  • Perseverance

Reflectiveness – being ready, willing and able to become more strategic about learning

  • Planning
  • Revising
  • Distilling
  • Meta-learning

Resourcefulness – being ready, willing and able to learn in different ways

  • Questioning
  • Making links
  • Imagining
  • Reasoning
  • Capitalising

We might think of these skills as ‘learning muscles’.  Just as we build up our physical muscles with exercise, we can exercise our learning muscles to develop their strength and stamina.  We believe by doing this, our pupils will be more curious, more willing to take risks and give it a go, be more imaginative and creative, more thoughtful and able to learn with and from others.

Every Monday we hold a Treasure Seeker Assembly, in which children are rewarded for actively displaying one of the 4Rs in their learning.  We aim for the skills to become habit-forming across the whole school.