Powering Up Your School

Book excerpt: 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.