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

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.