Creating learning without limits

This book tells the story of what one primary school community learned about how to create education based on inclusive, egalitarian principles, in an environment free from determinist beliefs about ability. With the courage to organise and develop in accordance with their own values and beliefs about how people learn, and resisting the pressures of the Standards Agenda, this staff group, in just a few years, moved the school out of special measures to become a thriving, enquiring, learning community (also rated 'outstanding' by OFSTED). Their collective work was guided by the findings of a previous project, Learning Without Limits (Hart, Dixon, Drummond and McIntyre, 2004), an empirical study of nine individual teachers who had rejected the concept of fixed ability. The authors explored what these teachers found themselves able to do, in their own classrooms, to increase the capacity to learn of all children and young people. This new book explores what becomes possible when the same ideas and principles are used creatively to guide and inspire whole school improvement. We present empirical evidence of strategies and practices that this staff group used in the development of a whole school approach based on the premise of the educability of everybody. We describe how they worked together to realise their shared values and principles; we illustrate their commitment to a resolutelyanti-determinist view of learning -- to 'learning without limits'; we show how these common understandings permeate their distinctive approach to pedagogy,curriculum, assessment, teacher/learner relationships, leadership and partnership with parents and community. This book will inspire teachers, head teachers, student teachers, lecturers and policy makers, indeed everyone who has a stake in how contemporary education impacts on children's lives and learning, now and in the future. It demonstrates persuasively that it is possible to resist the pressures of the current standards agenda and, by trusting children and teachers, build an alternative approach to school improvement that is more humane, equitable and life-enhancing for everybody.

• ISBN: 978-0-335-24211-5
• Editorial: McGraw-Hill
• Encuadernacion: Rústica
• Páginas: 232
• Fecha Publicación: 01/05/2012
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés