Spotlighting the Strengths of Every Single Student: Why U.S. Schools Need a New, Strengths-Based Approach

By Elsie Jones-Smith

Book Overview

This book explains how a teaching system focused on identifying and stoking each student's strengths--rather than concentrating on deficits--can bring remarkable academic improvement and achievement.

It's a familiar and seemingly logical model: to improve performance, identify weaknesses and target these problem areas. Could doing the opposite be a better way? Licensed clinical psychologist Elsie Jones-Smith argues that strengths-based systems are indeed more effective--not just in social work, where the philosophy became popular; or in the business world, where the concept is increasingly being embraced--but in the academic setting as well.

Spotlighting the Strengths of Every Single Student: Why U.S. Schools Need a New, Strengths-Based Approach explains how and why a system that focuses on students' strengths enables kids to be self-confident, goal-directed, and to possess a stronger sense of self-efficacy, self-control, and academic achievement. Jones-Smith also explains how such a system spurs appreciation and advancement of multiple intelligences, which in turn gives students the ability to address weaknesses--on their own. Another plus: this approach has also been shown to generally reduce school disciplinary actions and increase class attendance time.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031339153X
• ISBN13: 9780313391538
• Release Date: August 2011
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 7 to 17 years