Making Kids Cleverer

In Making Kids Cleverer David Didau reignites the nature vs nurture debate around intelligence and offers informed advice on how teachers can help their students acquire a store of knowledge and skills that is both relevant and robust. Given the choice, who wouldn't want to be cleverer? What teacher wouldn't want this for their students, and what parent wouldn't wish it for their children? When David started researching this book, he thought the answers to these questions were obvious. But it turns out that the very idea of measuring intelligence makes many people extremely uncomfortable. Some, particularly those who work in education, are often concerned that more intelligent pupils already have significant advantages over less intelligent ones, and are therefore opposed to anything that they regard as increasing this inequality. Writing in his inimitable, thought-provoking style, David expertly analyses an impressive body of research from the field of cognitive science to help readers gain a firmer grasp on the psychological construct that is broadly termed intelligence. And it turns out that we can increase intelligence, particularly in children from disadvantaged backgrounds. David argues that, with greater access to culturally accumulated information taught explicitly within a knowledge-rich curriculum disadvantaged children are more likely to become cleverer and, therefore, more creative, to become better problem-solvers and be able to think more critically. Once teachers have absorbed (but not necessarily agreed with) his arguments, David hopes they will find the simple question that he asks himself whenever he encounters new educational initiatives Will this make children cleverer? as useful as he does. Suitable for all teachers in all settings.