Review

Student motivation is widely discussed in educational psychology, highlighting the need to promote their engagement in school activities, which is related to how much this student is committed to the achievement and active participation of their studies, which may involve behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and agent aspects. Therefore, it starts from the assumption that the learner has an important role in their learning process.

It is evident that students’ interest is a fundamental element of their learning process, although one must be aware with this accountability, assigning to them the exclusivity of school success or failure, forgetting the other variables linked to this indicator.

One of the variables that must be considered is that most students do not have the cognitive tools necessary to develop learning, especially the thought processes, more precisely, those responsible for the individual’s reflexivity.

This book, released in 2019 and containing 200 pages, is an initiative by the author to disseminate part of his experience as a cognitive scientist, an expert in intelligence expandability, a researcher in the field of education, and his work as an educational consultant in different contexts.

The work is divided into 11 chapters; in the first chapter, Claxton tells his experiences as an apprentice when he met professors who did not supervise his activities, which he names as a kind of “benign neglect.” In this way, he talks about the need he had to become solely responsible for his learning. This aroused special interest in Claxton in thinking about how he could learn better, thus exercising what he refers to throughout his work as “the muscles of learning.”

It is precisely at this point, in terms of thinking about one’s learning, that Claxton (p. 17) problematizes the current situation in most schools. The author denounces that schools do not invest in an education that develops their students’ thinking, and end up forming, even if unintentionally, “apathetic, passive, extrinsically motivated, dependent, dogmatic, timid, fragile, and gullible young people.

For Claxton, these schools, evaluated by their students’ performance, are forced to value only the grades. Nevertheless, he emphasizes the need to invest in a type of education capable of developing curiosity, proactivity concerning the interest in learning, mobilization of intrinsic motivation (i.e., going beyond studying to earn concepts and grades and seeking satisfaction in developing learning for something that challenges), an independent mind that seeks to learn (i.e., a participative mind in the learning process), and criticality and skepticism, which should have the non-confidence in everything that is presented as an objective, especially that which does not seem reliable.

Claxton raises recurrent and problematic issues that we have faced for ages in our schools, in addition to listing the essential characteristics for forming students who can meet the demands of this society. However, in regards to his thesis based on his experience as a student, in which the lack of guidance from his teacher led him to seek alternatives to improve his learning, it does not seem to be a dialogical solution capable of being efficient for a good portion of Brazilian students.

One pivotal point is the concept of learning. This is covered in chapter 2, which begins by defining three themes that have a similar relationship: knowledge, learning, and the power of learning. Knowledge is what the learner knows or knows how to do, while learning is a change in what they know or how something is done. The power of learning is described as the change in how the individual learns. In this sense, it is clear that in order to understand the power of learning and, consequently, the Learning Power Approach (LPA), it is necessary to have a good understanding of what learning is. For this, he cites throughout the work several references to this concept:

Chapter 3 discusses the purpose of the Learning Power Approach:

The goal of the Learning Power Approach (LPA) is to develop all students to be confident and capable learners - readly, willing, and able to choose, create, research, seek, solve, and evaluate learning for themselves, alone and with others, in and out of school (^{CLAXTON, 2019}, p. 41).

According to the author, the method aims to prepare students for the challenges and uncertainties of future life. For the school, the LPA serves as a “springboard” for learning as it intends to adjust all the tools available in the “toolbox” of learning and to stop focusing on the two that are most usual in most schools: memorizing and repeating (p. 29-30). The learning “toolbox” also features observation, reading, criticism, experimentation, imagination, reasoning, imitation, discussion, reflections, and practice.

Chapter 4 describes how to begin using the LPA and some of the quick gains it can provide. Chapter 5 demonstrates why the power of learning is important and cites ten good reasons to exercise your “learning muscles.” Chapter 6 revisits learning, but now through the “power of learning,” while chapter 7 discusses the power of learning (PL), providing some illustrations of its use in the classroom.

Chapter 8 presents the principles of creating the LPA classroom, and reports of some evidence regarding LPA are found in chapter 9, in which the author leaves some clues as to what this method would be like, as there is no clear definition throughout the work. Through the successful cases of the LPA, he cites activities developed in the partner schools and testimonials from students and teachers. With this, it is understood that the LPA is teaching while being concerned with the students’ thinking. And once students master the cognitive tools of learning, they put them into practice during the activities conducted in the classroom by the teacher. The central concern of the LPA is the development of thinking, and the specific content of the subjects will be a consequence of this development. Lastly, chapter 10 provides the distinctions and misconceptions, whereas, in chapter 11, the author reports the importance of integrating culture into student learning.

It is a fluid and compact reading that brings subjects discussed nowadays in a didactic way, including habits of mind by Art Costa and Bena Kallick, developing a growth mindset by Carol Dweck, visible thinking by David Perkins and Ron Ritchhart, learning challenge (“learning hole”) by James Nottingham, learning dimensions by Robert Marzano, sparks of genius by Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein, as well as self-regulation, critical thinking, creative thinking, metacognition, among others, which makes the book a reference catalog of contemporary learning scholars.

Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that this is not an academic book and cannot be taken as an exclusive model to be practiced by the teacher. It should be seen as work based on an experience report, and each teacher or learner who wishes to employ the method presented by Claxton should consider their reality and make the necessary adaptations. After all, learning is a process, and each person will play their role, so learning how to learn is possible, albeit recognizing oneself as the author of the learning. For this, learning methods and tips are useful as parameters and good practices but not as magic formulas.