getting learning under control

G E T T I N G L E A R N I N G U N D E R C O N T R O L *

Glen Evans University of Queensland

It is somewhat puzzling how infrequently learning processes occupy centre stage in educational policy discussions, or in statements and theorizing on curriculum making, and inservice teacher education. This is so even though the importance of these processes is widely acknowledged. Even more surprisingly, as it turns out, not even teachers seem to pay a great deal of attention to the learning processes of their students.

A related observation was made by Norman (1980: 97) who argued:

It is strange that we expect students to learn yet seldom teach the m about learning. We expect students to solve problems yet seldom teach them about problem solving. And, similarly, we sometimes require students to remember a considerable body of material yet seldom teach them the art of memory.

Indeexl, the situation is even somewhat worse than Norman suggested; we do not even seem to take learning into account in any operational way in the design of educational policy, curriculum, teacher education, and perhaps in the act of teaching. Similarly, the strategies involved in intelligent action also seem to be relatively neglected. It is to these gaps that this address is directed.

Schooling and Learning Processes

Consider first some recent Australian documents. Schools in Australia is a statement released by the two Commonwealth Ministers of Employment, Education, and Train- ing, concerned with the promotion of a policy to increase the role played by education and training in Australia in responding to major economic challenges. The document states:

A high quality basic education is an essential prerequisite for a vocation- ally.skilled and adaptable labour force. More needs to be known about the level of competence achieved by our students at school, especially in the

* Invited AARE President's Address to the First Joint Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education and the New Z ~ a n d Association for Research in Education, Christchurch, December 1987.

2 Australian Educational Researcher

core disciplines of language, mathematics and science . . . . We need to examine new ways to impart the less measurable skills on which future prosperity depends - lifetime learning, enterprise and initiative, pursuit of excellence, communication skills, teamwork and responsibility. In other words, we need to lay the foundations of a productive culture (Dawkins and Holding, 1987:8-9). (my emphases)

I am not now commenting on the general aims of improving economically valuable skills or equipment for lifetime learning, although later I would like to address the question of what comprises such skills. The point to make is that, accepting the goals, the most critical link in the chain is likely to be the learning experiences of the students involved. The present indications are that promotion of learning processes is unlikely to be the focus of the evaluation which the government might commission. Certainly there is no further mention of learning processes in the skills document. Yet improvement of these learning skills, in transferable forms, across a wide range of knowledge domains, may be the best chance for an adaptable labour force.

A slightly earlier document, In the National Interest, which may well have been overtaken by Skills in Australia, was prepared by the Commonwealth Schools Com- mission (1987) to analyse the demands made by secondary education in relation to existing youth policy, and to clarify policy choices. This document appears to pay more attention to student learning. One of its key arguments is that secondary schools should provide a general education concerned with knowledge that is necessary for all, rather than developing specialists who have knowledge in depth, but who lack general understanding in important areas of knowledge. The Schools Commission saw these objectives for a generaleducation as being achieved by learners thinking things through for themselves, thinking critically about views and ideas rather than accepting the authority of someone else, working independently of the teacher, and accepting responsibility for their own learning.

These goals are consonant with the views being expressed in this address. How- ever, it needs to be recognized that they are in fact goals, rather than processes or procedures used by teachers. How to achieve these goals has not been proposed in any sure way by the Schools Commission.

Not all policy documents ignore procedural issues. An even earlier document, the Report of the Quality of Education Review Committee (QERC, 1985) put goals for general competencies into a formal policy recommendation. It recommended that Commonwealth general recurrent grants to government and non-government schools should be directeA towards the priority areas of:

Improving among students in primary, and particularly junior primary schools, the development of general competences of: acquiring information; conveying information; applying logical processes; performing practical tasksas individuals; and performing practical tasks as members of a group. It also recommended that priority be given to enhancing the

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competence of teachers in bringing about the necessary improvements (QERC, 1985:201).

These competences are again expressed as outcomes, but the Committee did in this case provide some suggestions on how they might be developed, such as giving students the opportunity to observe other people performing the task well. It also suggested that the requisite skills might best be acquired in the process of attempting whole, purposeful tasks, rather than through instruction and drill that is unconnected with purposes. It was the view of the Committee that all teachers at all levels should have the responsibility of attending to the development of these competences and that curriculum designs should p r ~ accordingly (QERC, 1985:84). What is lacking, however, even in such statements, is a generally understood rationale and account of the learning processes involved. These are taken for granted.

When one considers similar recent educational reports from the various Australian states (e.g., Blackburn, 1985; Queensland Department of Education, 1986; Swan and McKinnon, undated; Beazley, 1984), a case could be made that, in Australia, at least, there is increasing concern with general cognitive competencies and learning outcomes, but not yet strong attention at the policy level to the kinds of procedures entailed or to the learning processes involved.

It might be argued that such a situation is to be expected in broad policy statements, and that the task of developing learning process goals should be undertaken at the level of professional curriculum development, teacher inservice, or school practices. Unfortunately this does not seem to be happening, on any large scale, even at these levels. The reviews of research on teacher education by Turney (1987) and of curriculum by Musgrave (1987) in Keeves' (1987) compilation of recent education research in Australia did not mention student learning processes as a consideration.

Again it might be assumed that attention to learning processes is part of the professional equipment of the teacher, and could be taken for granted in reviews of research on teacher education and curriculum development.

Again this assumption does not seem to be warranted. The most accessible review of teachers' thinking about teaching is to be found in Clark and Peterson's (1986) review in the recent handbook of Research on Teaching (Wittrock, 1986). Unfortunately, Clark and Peterson report little research carried out in Australia or New Zealand, and it is possible that our teachers would differ from those who were the participants in the studies reported. It is difficult to see from Clark and Peterson's review that most teachers take very much account of student learningprocesses during planning, or that they use theo- ries about learning, for example, concerning advance organizers, building on experience, cumulative structuring, or practice, feeAback, and reinforcement. No such things were mentioned. One of the chapters following Clark and Peterson's is by Weinstein and Mayer on the teaching of learning strategies. None of the approaches suggested by these authors was mentioned in Clark and Peterson's review of concerns during planning. Some studies even suggest that the largest amount of planning time may be spent on content rather than on the students involved (Peterson, Marx, and Clark, 1978). Thus while they are attentive to sequencing content and students' likely re-


sponses, teachers in general appear not to gear their planning to the way in which students actually deal with information.

Further, there is no hint in the reported research that teachers may be spending much or any of their time, while actually teaching, forming hypotheses about the nature of student difficulties or trying to make use of a task analysis of how learners might be approaching the job in hand. This may be contrasted, for example, with the advice given by Case (1978) on how to help overcome student difficulties by undertaking an analysis of how the student performs the task. Indeed, Clark and Peterson (1986) con- eluded that the majority of reported interactive decisions are produced by factors other than judgements made about the student.

It is quite possible that principles of pedagogy may be relatively common in teachers' thinking, for example, the ideas of linking, integration, or closure, e.g., Con- nors, 1978), but they need not necessarily be related to a conception of learning by the students. There is clearly neeA for a great deal more research which focuses more closely on the teacher's appreciation of students learning processes.

It is difficult to f'md research which compares both students' thought processes and teachers' thought processes. However, it is instructive to compare the review by Wit- troek (1986) of the former with that of Clark and Peterson of the latter. For example, Wittroek considers the relationship between time-on-task and achievement, and distin- guishes between time-on-task and attention. Students self-reported attention appears to correlate more highly with success on some tasks than classroom observers' reports of time-on-task, and presumably with teachers' perceptions of students' attentiveness. In- deed, Wittrock demonstrated from reviews of a number of studies that students" self-reports of their attention and specific cognitive strategies during teaching/learning episodes are quite good laedictors of achievement.

There is a number of processes which, at least potentially, can be controlled by learners. These include rehearsal, association through chaining ideas together, association by imagery or through meaning, and connecting material together or restructuring ideas to accommodate new material. A number of studies also supports the idea that it might be possible to help students gain quite self-conscious control of their learning processes. The teaching of such metacognitive strategies as comprehension monitoring and study monitoring (Baker and Brown, 1984) has recently assumed considerable importance as a research focus. Unfortunately, it does not yet seem to be the case that student learning processes are a central focus of teachers" concems. Certainly classroom instruction in higher mental processes appears to be rare. It is nearly always the case that the focus of instruction is the target skill or knowledge itself, not the processes that facilitate such learning.

Three Propositions

I should now like to make use of the foregoing review of teachers' and students' thought processes to enunciate three propositions concerning students' learning in classroom settings and what we can do about it. They are as follows:


Proposition 1 If you don't do anything about learning processes what you do won't make any

difference.

What I mean by this is that, left to their own devices, some students do come to be able to control their learning in efficient ways. The majority probably do not (see, for example, Paris and Myers, 1981). If, as seems likely, teachers do not generally help students gain efficient learning strategies, or even take account of their learning processes in the act of teaching, it can only be expected that student learning outcomes will be less than they need be, and the learning of strategies, such as those involved with learning how to learn, may be poorer still. If it is correct that educational policy making, curriculum development, inservice education of teachers, and teaching do not directly take account of students' learning, it is likely that what mainly affects the nature of students' learning in school are unintended aspects of schooling - availability of resources, family background, peer pressures, economic pressures, and the like. There is a strong case that students' learning activities are not presently a deliberate part of the school curriculum. Rather they belong with the hidden curriculum as unanticipated effects. They are not part of the explicit shared concerns of those involved in education.

Proposition 2 Taking charge of one's own learning is not only necessary to more efficient school

learning, for example, skill acquisition, but is itself a key skill.

The main basis for this proposition is simply to note the fast rate of technological and social change. It is now a truism that this rate of change means that one of our key assets is the ability to learn new skills quickly and adaptively. Learning to cope with and use new technology and learning new skills will undoubtedly become a common- place social and vocational requirement, the neeA for adaptability and self help is likely to increase exponentially. The convergent national and personal needs are for generative learning and action, that is, the active construction of knowledge and procedures (e.g., Wittrock, 1983). Not only can it be argued that getting learning under control will be increasingly necessary for learners, but that this kind of self control will increasingly emerge as a basic human right, ff people are to be able to adapt to an increasingly complex social and technological society.

Proposition 3 There is now sufficient knowledge about learning, and about how the learner may

control knowledge acquisition and knowledge use, for teachers and students to make them central concerns of education.

As a corollary, there is sufficient knowledge for policy makers, curriculum makers, teacher educators, and educational resea~hers also to make them central concerns.


In order to examine the third proposition, that we can make learning a more central concern, it is helpful to make a number of distinctions. First, whether they are considered in teaching or not, all learners must necessarily use some kind of learning or performance strategies to get through classroom tasks. These strategies are probably more often than not implicit or subconscious, but as the works of Edwards and Marland (1984) and Marland, Patching, Putt, and Stone(184), for example, show us, they can be ~ b e d very explicitly by some learners. Secondly, strategies can be employed spon- taneously by learners (again, see Edwards and Marland, 1984; and Marland et al, 1984) or they can be forced by the lesson procedures, tasks, or materials.

Rigney (1980) and Den t and Murphy (1986) have recendy combined these two distinctions in a scheme similar to the following, which combines student awareness of learning process with the source of control of the process.

Source of Control

Student Controlled

Aware A Student Awareness Unaware C

Lesson Controlled

D

The most common situation is represented by Cell D in which the student is prcsse4 by the task arrangement or presentation into the use of certain strategies, without being aware of the strategies. The earlier discussion suggests that teachers, and perhaps curriculum developers, may not be explicitly aware of the strategies they are pro- meting. Rigney (1978) argued that since such learning processes, for example, those gcnerateA by the use of explanations based on analogy (e.g., Ortony, 1975) or through the use of advance organizers (Ausubel, 1968), are hidden from the learner, they do little to foster further independent le, aming.

Situation B occurs when the lesson procedure gives explicit instruction in the use of the learning strategy, thus possibly making it accessible for the student to practise consciously and independently, i.e., situation A, or to practise the strategy to the point where it may be used automatically, i.e., situation C. I should now like to use this framework to discuss the issues involved in teachers' promoting these four situations more deliberately than is now the case.

Lesson Controlled Implicit Strategies

It is helpful to consider first the teacher or curriculum controlled situations of Type D where the main focus is the learning of target materials which are not themselves learning strategies. These arc the simplest situations for ~chcrs to control since there is, in a sense, only one layer of learning to consider, the students' acquisition of the target


knowledge or skill. In the other three situations, a second layer is added - the students' learning of acquisition and performance strategies.

There is a large variety of ways in which the learning environment can be manipulated in order to bring about efficient learning. The most obvious, perhaps, is ensuring sufficient time-on-task and attempting to secure engagement, that is, active attention to the task by the students. The learner controlled counterpart of these is, inci- dentally, not quite the same thing. It amounts to some control over mood in order to enhance self-engagement (e.g., Meichenbaum, 1977).

A second common Type D approach is the use of feedback by the teacher, to provide either reinforcement or information for improving students' performance. Again, the learner controlled version is somewhat different. It amounts to self monitoring and active seeking of feedback.

There are many other lesson controlled procedures, including such management techniques as cuing, e.g., announcing a change in topic, an emphasis, or a transition; relating new learning to students' previous knowledge, experience, or interests; and contextualizing or utilizing concrete examples. Others involve use of language with clear meaning for the students, careful structuring of material to be presented, and clari- fication of the critical task, i.e., letting students know precisely what will be expected of them. Such approaches might well be regarded as basic to instruction. The review by Clark and Peterson suggests, however, that they are by no means universal, and not necessarily applied with their effects on the cognitions of learners in mind.

There are several other procedures which could be drawn from the literature of the last quarter century, which are perhaps less intuitive. Ausubel's (1968) theory of advance organizers is well known. Ausubel also drew attention to the importance of the knowledge base and how it needs to be structured for new learning, a theme that has re- ocurred frequently in several guises (e.g., Chi, 1978; Glaser, 1984). One finding has been that children's knowledge base may be very different from what teachers imagine it to be, as shown, for example, in the extensive work on alternative frameworks in science education (e.g., Driver, 1981; Gilbert, Osborne, and Fensham, 1982; Gunstone and White, 1981; Osborne, 1981).

Similarly, recent knowledge of depth of processing (Craik and Lockhart, 1972; Craik, 1979), the processing differences between novices and experts (Chi, Glaser, and Rees, 1982), the development of skills from propositional knowledge (Anderson, 1982), task analysis (Case, 1978; Gagne and Briggs, 1979), and processing capacity (Case, 1985) all could contribute to the development of teaching methods.

This list of available knowledge on which teaching might be baseA is certainly partial, but it points to a rich array of possible teaching procedures which might allow the teacher, the lesson, or the text to help learners towards effective acquisition. Only a few of these teaching procedures appear to be common to the repertoire of many teachers. There is clearly much to be gained by helping teachers utilize such knowledge in classroom settings.

The important point is that these techniques still belong to Cell D of the scheme presented earlier- they do not, in themselves, hand control over learning to the learner.


As valuable as they might be, there is still, arguably, an even more valuable goal to be won - that of helping learners become self-generative. It is to this I now turn.

Is It Worthwhile Worrying About Self-generative Learning?

Before too much energy is spent on developing self-generative learning, it is worthwhile asking whether it occurs as a natural part of development. Is there any nee~ to worry about it7 It might just happen. One answer is that there appears to be a wide range of individual differences, related to maturity, experience, and environmental press. Some children and adolescents achieve a high level of control. Others don't. Biggs and Collis (1982), for example, demonstrated how differences in performance levels could be anal- ysed using the SOLO taxonomy, based on the structural features of student productions. These features are related to age and task, but the full range of levels is observable even among tertiary students, for any particular task. Similar continua of individual differences (e.g., Entwisfle, 1981; Matron and Saljo, 1976; Hunt, 1971) tell us that students, at all ages, may be at very different levels in their ability to control learning and action, and that they may differ qualitatively in the approaches they use. An initial step in helping teachers to help their students better to control their learning and utilization of knowledge may be to make methods of exploring student thinking more accessible to teachers, both pre-service and inservice.

A second way of answering the question of spontaneous improvement is to study the kinds of strategies which children do actually develop. Piaget's codification of age related strategies is well known - suggesting increasing ability in systematic planning, self monitoring, hypothesis formation and evaluation, as well as increasingly powerful operations. Piaget may well have underestimated at least some aspects of children's capacity. Engfish (1986), for example, has shown how young children appear to develop sophisticated strategies for generating combinations, given the opportunity to control the task for themselves.

Typically, however, children and adolescents do not seem to develop control strategies very well in school conditions. Donaldson (1985), for example, points to the failure of many children to control abstract tasks that are disembedded from real contexts, a situation which is common even in infants schools. Teachers also (e.g., Hynes, 1986) report disaPl~intment with their students' understanding and initiative.

My own recent studies in mathematics classroom teaching and learning (Evans, 1986) suggested not only that many students tend to be unable to control novel situations, but they tend not to monitor or evaluate decisions that they make in undertaking mathematical tasks. Rather, they tend to use specific or routine procedures, even where the situation is clearly problematic; they neglect both understanding of the material and strategies to cope with problems. Detailed analyses of video tapes of several lessons of each of eight teachers during a single semester indicated that the major concerns of the teachers were also with specific procedures. The opportunities for students to practice higher order procedures, to come to grips with relational understanding, and to self monitor activities were relatively few.


A third way to approach the question of natural development of learning and control strategies is to ask if they can be systematically improved in ordinary school settings. The answer to this question appears to be yes (e.g., Baird and Mitchell, 1986; Palincsar and Brown, 1984; Derry and Murphy, 1986). The Philosophy for Children movement (e.g., Splitter, 1987) also illustrates how a classroom environment can be changed so as to put children in charge of their learning. However, at this stage there are many unanswered questions and some qualifying issues are discussed shortly. Don- aldson's and Splitter's observations and the results of English's research also suggest a related useful question. What is there about most school and college environments that actually prevents the development of learning and action strategies of the type being considered?

Issues In The Improvement Of Self-generative Learning

If we conclude from what has been said so far that strategies and processes for learning and intelligent action are both teachable and worthwhile teaching, an appropriate final task of this paper is to consider some of the issues involved more systematically.

(1) The Nature of the Processes. In order for curriculum makers and teaching to be able to influence the development of skills involved in learning and intelligent action, it seems important that they be carefully conceptualized. There have been a variety of approaches to this task (e.g., Sternberg, 1983; Davidson and Sternberg, 1985; Butter- field, 1986). It seems important to present these ideas in ways which might make them easily usable by teachers.

The categories I now propose were suggested by the study of mathematics performance mentioned earlier as well as by a synthesis of the literature (Evans, 1986). In this scheme, the person is regarded as having available intellectual resources which can be controlled. Intellectual resources are taken to be of two kinds - propositional knowledge and procedural knowledge. Under appropriate conditions of motivation and feeling, it is assumed that any task can be classified and appropriate resources deployed. The results of action can also be continuously monitored and evaluated and resources rede- ployed if necessary.

Propositional knowledge, or, to use Ryle's (1949) term, "knowing that" is taken to be the network of facts, statements, propositions, recipes for procedures, concepts, relationships, and images which a person may use to inform or "think about" any new situation. It is assumed that when a person acts in any situation this propositional knowledge is used either implicitly or explicitly in setting up goals and sub-goals and in monitoring and evaluating actions and their outcomes (e.g., Greeno, Riley and Gel- man, 1984; Taylor and Evans, 1985). "Knowing that" contrasts with procedural knowledge or "knowing how". Specific Procedures refer to those patterns of action, either automatized or flexible, with some modification possible, which are prompted directly by specific features of the task. These kinds of procedure are taken not to involve problem solving in themselves, although they may be applied as the result of problem


solving. Higher order procedures are seen as necessary to account for the fact that specific procedures a ~ themselves to be subject to control and change. They are con- ceived as general procedures which operate on specific procedures by modifying and combining them to produce new and more streamflined procedures. Other higher order procedures are posited to interpret propositional knowledge into procedural action or to tackle problems by searching and evaluating specific procedures (cf. Scandura, 1981) or combining and comparing items of knowledge and pmceAures.

Task classification is one aspect of what has been called executive control. It in- cludes recognition or analysis of the context, recognition or selection of the domain of knowledge appropriate to the context or presented task, the selection of goals for action, and the selection of intellectual resources, i.e., specific propositional knowledge, specific procedures, and higher order procedures appropriate to the task. One aspect of task selection is to ~ g n i z e whether an automatic response or specific procedure is appropriate or whether a more problematic situation exists, demanding higher order procedures.

Monitoring of performance is taken to involve reconciliation and evaluation. This applies to one's selection and interpretation of tasks, to selection of procedures, and to the outcomes of action. These various aspects may be reconciled with each other and with one's propositional knowledge base. This kind of monitoring has also been re- ferred to in a variety of contexts, for example, mathematics learning (Skemp, 1979; Schoenfeld, 1985) and reading (Brown and Day, 1983; Brown, Campione, and Day, 1981; Palincsar and Brown, 1984). Monitoring of performance nee~ not be restricted to internal actions or to self-monitoring of results; it also must include the use of feedback from others.

My reason for spending some lime on these theoretical categories of mental action is that they illustrate the possibility of setting up some tangible framework which can be used by teachers to guide them in their discussions with their students. The categories appear to have some well established conceptual and empirical support and they include some of the aspects of control which adolescents themselves see as important (e.g., Evans and Poole, 1987).

(2) Detached vs Embedded Teaching of Learning Strategies. This is also one of the principal issues. Richard White (1986) in describing the origins of the PEEL (Project for the Enhancement of Effective ~ i n g ) Project (see below) argued for one kind of embedding in which the learning strategies to be taught pervaded all the lessons the students had; there were no ~ i a l PEEL classes. A different kind of embedding occurs when there are sp~ial strategy classes but the material used to teach the strategies is in itself important (e.g., Steinberg, 1983). Most attempts at teaching learning strategies, however, appear to have been "stand alone" or detached from the main curriculum of the school or college (see Weinstein and Mayer, 1985). There are strong arguments for the first kind of embedded approach, that is, one that pervades the whole cm~culum, mainly in terms of transferability to new situations and ease of mental access (see Derry and Murphy, 1986).


(3) Explicit vs Implicit Learning of Strategies. A third issue is concerned with whether learners should initially be made explicitly aware of learning or action strategies or whether they should gradually discover them. A study by Stevenson (1986a, 19861)) of the learning of apprentices illustrates the discovery approach. In one experiment, a group of apprentice mechanics learnt how to dismantle and assemble a gearbox. In the other, a group of apprentice hairdressers learnt "razor cutting". In each case there was an initial training task followed by generalization tasks after a time interval (one day for the mechanics; 7 days for the hairdressers). In each case the generalization task was related to, but differed from the original task, e.g., working with a distinctively different type of gearbox. In each case, the task was followed through until a criterion of success was achieved. In each case, there were two methods of instruction and both methods involved the use of written materials which the students used to direct them in the practical tasks. In Method A in each group, the students were required to follow the written notes without help from the teacher. The teacher's task was to answer questions or in- tervene only when absolutely necessary - i.e., when the student found it impossible to work out a detail unaided or there could be damage to equipment. In Method B, the teacher's task was to ensure that students understood the verbal matetals adequately before the practical work was begun and to anticipate difficulties during the practical work, but otherwise to follow the same procedure as for Method A. In the generalization task both groups were treated as for Method A. The dependent variables were the number of items of help sought by the student or deemed necessary by the teacher (either verbal or written).

The results showed that in each case it was the group of students with less help on the first occasion who requested help on fewer tasks on the subsequent occasion, or who were seen by the teachers as neexling less help. In view of the small amount of time involved in the initial treatment (one day), it is of interest that the differences reached significance.

The inference which may be drawn from such results is that forcing students to develop their own interpretations of text and diagrams in some way helped them to discover strategies for doing so. In this sense, they had been forced into learning to learn. Stevenson was also able to devise a measure of press towards independent learning, as perceived by the students and the teachers. In both cases Method A was perceived as re- quiring more independent learning, or to use Stevenson's term, higher order cognitive holding power.

The study by English (1986), mentioned earlier, showed that in the course of four or five tasks in a single sitting, the children involved, who were aged from four to eight, frequently appeared to change task slrategies - from one dependent on trial and er- ror and accurate checking to one involving the generation of combinations through a systematic cycle. These spontaneous changes indicate the ability of even young children to learn complex strategies from experience, even though no verbalization of the rule is made, and may, indeeA, be unavailable.

These examples of discovery do not, of course, provide evidence about the relative superiority of implicit or explicit teaching of learning strategies in classroom settings. They do suggest the need for research on the two approaches.

12 Australian Educational R esearc her

(4) Utilization of Strategies. The fourth issue concerns the utilization of strategies and higher order proc~ures which have been learnt. It is whether the strategy should be deliberately applied or whether it should become automatized. This is closely related to the acquisition issue. The main question is whether automatic skills can be brought under conscious control when appropriate and whether they can be informed by some basic rationale. These are essentially the questions which apply to any skill, not just learning and thinking skills. Being able to raise the skill to consciousness means that it is possible to reflect on its use and modify it. Having a conceptual rationale provides even greater control. However, there is the possibility that over concern with enunciat- ing processing skills might interfere with the free flow of the process.

(5) Concepts, Recipes or Models. This brief discussion above raises another issue, on the extent to which a processing skill should be concept-driven. Palincsar and Brown (1984) reported remarkable success in a well known study involving reading comprehension in which (a) they focussed on clear and clef'mite reading skills - summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting, and in which (b) they used a technique known as reciprocal teaching, which forces learner activity, is rich in feedback, and provides instruction in why, when, and where the activities should be applied. The skills and their rationale were thus clearly exposed. They were taught, however, not only, or even mainly, by prescription or precept, but by modelling. Students were reminded, for example, that "a summary is a shortened version, it doesn't include detail", and asked "can you find the most important information?" They thus had a concept of "summary" but no specific recipes. But modelling was used when prompts failed. Modelling, feedback, and provision of a rationale may well all be essential ingredients of skill learning.

(6) Domain Specific Knowledge. A further related issue concerns the efficacy of domain specific knowledge, compared with general processing knowledge or skill. This issue has been raised particularly by Glaser (1984) and his colleagues, The issue may be more apparent than real. The importance of appropriate domain specific knowledge cannot be seriously questioned, whether that knowledge is of the propositions and structures of the domain or of the typical procedures. Further there is increasing accep- tance of the view (e.g., Glaser, 1984; Derry and Murphy, 1986) that for general skills to be effective they must be utilized and practised in all of the environments in which they are to be used, that is, they must also become tied to particular domains. ~ i n g and action strategies need to become part of the domain specific knowledge.

(7) Practice. The role of practice in skill learning has long been recognized. How- ever, Fitts (1964) and, more recently, Anderson (1982) have demonstrated that practice is itself an active process, the initial stages of which, for many intellectual, as well as physical, skills amount to an interpretation of propositional or declarative knowledge, whether recipe or conceptual, into a procedural form. Following the fu-st phase, there is some evidence of two others, in which the skill is gradually divorced from its depen-


dency on propositional control and smoothed into an autonomous action. Skills which are learnt by modelling may well have a different course, but practice, sometimes mas- sive practice, may, nevertheless, be a requisite.

(8) The Role of Feelings. Many well established programs clearly recognize the role of affect in cognitive functioning, and entail strategies that the learner may use to control mood, to have positive self feeling, or to experience a sense of purpose (e.g., Dansereau, 1985). On the other hand, students who become involved in programs that attempt to foster learning and thinking strategies sometimes question the value of what they are doing. Baird and Mitchell (1986) point to the instrumental values expressed by secondary students involved in the PEEL Project and the need for them to be introduced to the idea of "active learning" gradually. New approaches may generate negative feelings as well as positive ones.

(9) Changing the Setting. One of the advantages of embedding the learning of strategies involved in learning and thinking into regular classroom activities, as mentioned earlier, is that they may be directly associated with the subject matter that students and teachers are most intent on dealing with. One of the claimed disadvantages is that, un- less the strategies are in some way abstracted from particular contexts, they will not be generally accessible in other settings. It is also true that, even in a particular subject area, isolated use of materials that encourage active processing may not readily general- ize to other topics.

Such considerations suggest that active learning approaches may need to be taken on across the whole curriculum of the school or college, not as isolated instances and techniques, but as a general expectation. Such was the aim of the study initiated by Baird and Mitchell (1986) in a Victorian high school, the Project for the Enhancement of Effective Learning (PEEL) mentioned earlier. Their report suggests that genuine enhancement of learning processes amounts to much more than the introduction of special techniques or of separate "process" lessons. It amounts to changes in teaching styles, teacher-pupil relationships, expectations for students and teachers, and in many ways a new conception of schooling.

Conclusion

Greater control by students of their learning processes and their life activities is thus unlikely to occur without changes in the social structures of schooling, leading to qualitatively different roles for both teachers and learners. Self-generative learning by students is unlikely to be fostered by teachers who are themselves not self-generative. It is interesting that one should be forced to conclusions in the direction of greater partici- pation by students and teachers purely on the grounds of increased efficiency in quite traditional learning goals and adaptability. Such an approach has long been advocated on other grounds: of greater flexibility in decentralized decision-making, of learning to live democratically, of liberalization, or emancipation from oppression.


Consideration of learning goals and processing efficiency is, for some, an unex- pecteA quarter from which to find support for these ideals. It implies that much more detailed and serious consideration of learning and thinking processes needs to be undertaken in policy making, curriculum planning and development, and inservice education of teachers. The nature of learning and thinking should not be taken for granted as a professional concern, leaving administrators and policy makers, at best, to restrict their thinking on the matter to general statements about outcomes. All involved in the educational enterprise need to create a total ethos in which the quality of learning and control over learning matter.

The implications for educational researchers is, I believe, clear. Research into policy formation, educational administration, curriculum development, and inservice education, as well as teaching, needs to take more account of the central educational pro- tess of learning. Researchers into learning, conversely, will nee~ to be much more aware of the social, political and pragmatic conditions which presently seem to be limiting the value of their research.

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