Spotlight: Empowering Learners with Professor Guy Claxton
In the latest spotlight, Professor Guy Claxton shares practical ways to help learners become more curious, confident and independent. It features videos from his visit to Orbis earlier this year, showing how small everyday tweaks can build positive dispositions and create classrooms where students thrive.
What you’ll learn in this 90-minute module:
- How to encourage the development of positive learning dispositions.
- Ways to shape how learners think about learning and themselves through words, tone, and classroom habits.
- Simple everyday tweaks to teaching practice that help learners become more active, independent, and empowered.
Why this matters for educators
Helping learners build positive learning dispositions doesn’t require a complete overhaul. Small, intentional shifts can transform how they see themselves as learners. This course equips you with practical strategies to create a safe, thriving classroom where curiosity and independence can flourish.
Time commitment: 90-minutes (includes videos and reflection prompts)
Watch the trailer
Transcript
[Music
Curiosity is the engine of learning. But why on earth do we sometimes fail to switch the engine on and then complain that we're not getting anywhere? So our job, first of all, is to reduce to zero, the amount of real risk there is in the classroom to be a learner, to make it abundantly clear that this space is not like the other spaces that might have hurt you. That's the kind of attitude that we're looking for, right? Not easily defeated. A good grapple problem is something that everybody in the room could have a go at, but nobody in the room could do easily.
[Music]