Professor Guy Claxton    MA (Cantab), DPhil (Oxon), FBPsS, CPsychol

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Guy Claxton is Visiting Professor of Learning Science, and Director of Development of the Research Initiative on Culture and Learning in Organisations (CLIO) at the Graduate School of  Education, University of Bristol.

Professor Claxton is also an internationally renowned writer, consultant, lecturer and academic specialising in creativity, education and the mind.  He has a double first in Natural Science from Cambridge, a doctorate in cognitive psychology from Oxford and is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society.       

 

Research Interests Guy Claxton's interests are broad-ranging and inter-disciplinary. The common thread is a multifaceted exploration of the ways in which empirical work in cognitive psychology, sociocultural studies, and neuroscience can inform practical efforts to expand human psychological abilities in a range of different settings instructional, psychotherapeutic and even spiritual. With others, I am involved in the development of the hybrid discipline of learning science : an approach that sees education, of all kinds, as being as much about the expansion and transformation of cognitive and emotional capability (epistemic mentality and identity) as about the acquisition of particular bodies of knowledge, understanding and skill". 

 

Classroom climates and activities, psychotherapeutic interventions and contemplative practices can all be conceptualised as attempts not to transmit knowledge or solve problems directly, but to develop the power of individuals and groups to learn and think more effectively. My current work, for example, explores the potential of teaching and schooling for this kind of mind-expansion; the ways in which habits of memory and attention are transmitted and modified both socioculturally, through informal apprenticeship and imitation, and through techniques of attentional retraining (mindfulness); and how different cultures either afford or inhibit the use of non-articulate and non-deliberate ways of knowing such as intuition and reverie.

Publications:


Guy Claxton has written extensively on the various subjects from creative thinking and using intuition to help learn to buddhism. Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind is his most well known publication. John Cleese called this book Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Why Intelligence Increases When You Think Less (Fourth Estate 1997, Harper Perennial 1999) The essential guide to creative thinking! In an interview in Newsweek, Cleese said of Guy Claxtons work: Just occasionally I get the feeling that somebody has said something important. Psychoanalyst Anthony Storr  called it: a fascinating book that told me many things [about creativity and brain function] I ought to know but didn't. The book reviews cutting-edge research in cognitive science and neuroscience to make a compelling case for the intelligent unconscious.  

Summary of recent and forthcoming activities  

       In 2003, Guy Claxton 

       In 2002, Guy Claxton 

       In 2001, Guy Claxton  

       In 1999/2000, Guy Claxton  

          Additionally, Guy Claxton has in the last two years  

 

Professor Guy Claxton, guy.claxton@bris.ac.uk
Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, 35 Berkeley Square, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 1JA
page design by Imogen Newman, PA to Professor Claxton
, imogen.newman@bris.ac.uk  | updated: Oct 2003