United by the belief that the most significant factor in shaping the minds of young people is the cultural setting in which learning takes place, the twenty eminent contributors to this volume present new thinking on education across the boundaries of school, home, work and community.

The processes involved in creative thought seem mysterious and can often elude us. Yet the ability to think creatively and productively is vital to our personal and professional lives.Creativity is a major economic force in the 21st century and an essential part of everyday life. Being smart in today's world means we have to be flexible to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Demands upon us can change daily, our personal circumstances alter and the markets within which we operate shift. To achieve harmony, balance and success through all this constant change we need to think...

What's the Point of School? takes the reader beyond the sterile debates about City Academies and dumbed-down exams in order to reveal the key responsibility of education today: to create students who enjoy learning. With their emphasis on stressful exams and regurgitation of information, Guy Claxton claims that schools are currently doing more harm than good, primarily making students fear failure. Instead, schools must encourage students to develop their curiosity, ask stupid questions, and think for themselves. He explains scientists latest theories about how the human brain learns, and...

The human brain will do a number of unusual, interesting and important things - if given time. As described in this book, there is evidence from cognitive science and elsewhere that it will learn patterns of a degree of subtlety which normal, purposeful, busy consciousness cannot even see, let alone master; it will make sense out of hazy, ill-defined situations which leave everyday rationality flummoxed; it will get to the bottom of personal, emotional issues much more successfully than the questing intellect; it will detect and respond to meaning - in poetry, for example - that cannot be...

Education is a key topic for today's teachers and parents who have to stand up and have their say on the future of education. Everyone knows schools need rethinking our political and educational worlds teem with critiques and proposals. But few speak from the heart: from the perspectives and concerns of teachers, children and families as human beings (rather than as deliverers or recipients of the curriculum). In Educating Ruby, the authors show how teachers, parents and grandparents can cultivate confidence, curiosity, collaboration, communication, creativity, commitment and...