Appendix III
3
In Section 2 of this report the six key principles of classroom practice, which have been used to guide the school support team’s approach to maximising the advantages of smaller classes, were enumerated. Support for these principles was found from the empirical evidence drawn from various meta analysis which have been summarised by Hattie (2005) and Hattie & Timperley (2007). However, these ideas also rest on certain assumptions about how pupils learn because any theory of learning carries with it implications for teaching (Simon 1981, (2008a). Thus in defining pedagogy as the science of the art of teaching Gage (1978) argues that the science of teaching derives from ideas about learning, while the art of teaching consists of the teachers’
attempts to put these ideas into practice in a variety of different classroom contexts.
The latter is what we generally refer to as the teachers’ craft knowledge.
Charles Deforges, an ex-primary teacher and leading researcher on these matters, observes that schools would be even more successful in developing these principles that Simon called for nearly three decades ago, if we could all learn to “share and use the knowledge we have about learning”. Deforges accepts that there is a vast body of knowledge of learning which emerges from the everyday practice of teachers, but he observes that this knowledge is difficult to get at and therefore difficult to share.
Thus we cannot base our ideas about pedagogy solely on teachers’ craft knowledge.
But Desforges also observes that there is a small but strong body of scientific knowledge about learning to be gleaned from psychological research. However, he argues that while this knowledge is easy to get it is difficult to apply. He therefore suggests that the trick we need to perform is to bring the practical knowledge of teachers and the theoretical knowledge of researchers together in order to promote advanced teaching practices (Deforges 2003:14).
One of the earliest attempts to link different theories of learning to particular teaching approaches was undertaken by Joyce and Weil (1972). These authors devoted specific chapters to various interpretations of learning, and then illustrated their use from transcripts of actual lessons in which teachers either deliberately or intuitively made use of these particular ideas. Joyce and Weil make the point at the outset of the book that attempts to compare one teaching method with another or to fashion one overall general teaching method have a chequered history. Comparative studies generally show, these authors claimed, “that differences between different approaches are for specific objectives” and they go on to say “that although the results are very difficult to interpret the evidence to date gives little encouragement to those who would hope that we have identified a single reliable multi-purpose teaching strategy as the best approach.”(Joyce and Weil, 1972:8).
Because researchers have developed a multitude of different ways of representing the processes that we describe as learning, Joyce and Weil begin by defining what they term a number of families of models. Although these different families are not mutually exclusive, they do represent distinct approaches to learning and teaching according to Joyce and Weil. There are, for example, models based on theories
3 The appendix is based on extracts from Chapters 3 and 4 in Galton, M. (2007) Learning and Teaching in the Primary Classroom, London: Sage Publications.
about information processing or behaviour, others which draw upon ideas about social interaction, and models which tend to emphasise the development of personal understanding and self-actualisation. The task of linking these families of models with a specific repertoire of teaching activities results in a series of networks that are extremely complex. For example in the information processing category are listed seven alternative/complementary approaches, in the social interaction five, and in the personal models a further five. Recognising that such a degree of complexity was likely to limit the take up of these ideas a simpler version was created (Joyce et al., 1997). However, it still remains a complex and rather formidable task for teachers to master the intricacies of all the different combinations.
Ways of knowing
For the above reasons Galton (2007) has argued that a more useful starting point, from a practitioner’s point of view, might be to consider the kinds of knowledge demands which different tasks make upon the learner, and then to select an appropriate model of learning from the many which seeks the inculcation, accumulation or development of this particular kind of knowledge. The starting point of this analysis is a simple three part typology, which was constructed by Patricia Alexander and her colleagues, and was based on a synthesis of a number of articles in educational journals concerning the different ways that the authors wrote about knowledge when referring to learning, (Alexander et al 1991). These researchers argued most knowledge acquisition involved procedural, conceptual or metacognitive knowledge. Procedural knowledge is defined as more than ‘knowing what’ or the acquisition of new facts or new skills (usually called declarative knowledge). It also involves knowing how,’ that is the ability not only to locate new information but also in which circumstances to make use of it (conditional knowledge). In today’s primary classroom, where the use of the world-wide web is fairly commonplace, the ability to locate information, restructure it for a particular purpose, and then to use it to illustrate a point or principle would encompass this kind of procedural knowledge.
Conceptual knowledge, Alexander et al’s second over-arching category, concerns the knowledge of ideas, the way they function and the conditions in which they should be used. The term refers, by implication, to complex and often non-linear knowledge structures, unlike some simple mathematics or science concepts where the different parts constitute the definition of a whole (e.g. simple fractions or states of matter). A key process in the acquisition of conceptual knowledge is the capacity to recognise instances of belonging and not belonging to a given class which defines the concept, as in the ability to understand what constitutes a mammal and what one does about creatures such as whales. Because there are often a potentially large number of characteristics which can be used to define any classification we often create sub-categories which Alexander et al. (1991) term domain knowledge. Concepts which are central to a specialised field of study then become part of discipline knowledge.
The final component of conceptual knowledge is the ability to convey these ideas to others. This involves knowledge about the use of appropriate language (discourse knowledge). Within the framework of a given discipline, it is also necessary to use a form of words that allows meaning to be conveyed as propositional statements. This has to be done in ways which make use of knowledge of the language registers that are appropriate for a given audience. Alexander et al. (1991) defines knowledge of the
available and relevant styles of spoken and written communication as syntactic and rhetorical knowledge respectively.
The third part of the typology, metacognitive knowledge concerns the capacity to be aware of one’s cognitive processes and an ability to regulate or manage this process unaided. According to Pintrich (2002:219) metacognitive knowledge involves
“knowledge about cognition in general as well as awareness of and knowledge about one’s own cognition.” In recent years, the renewed interest by psychologists into this aspect of learning stems from the key part such knowledge plays in “helping students become responsible for their own cognition and thinking.” Pintrich makes the point that this interest is common to most theoretical approaches to learning and development:
“From neo-Piagetian models, to Vygotskian and cultural or situated learning models, regardless of their theoretical perspectives researchers agree that with development students become more aware of their own thinking as well as more knowledgeable about cognition in general. Furthermore, as they act on this awareness the tend to learn better…The labels for this general development tend to vary from theory to theory, but they include the development of metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive awareness, awareness, self-reflection and self-regulation.” (Pintrich 2002: 219)
Metacognition also involves what Shulman (1986; 1987) has called strategic knowledge, or the ability to recognise what is an acceptable form of cognitive processing within a given domain or discipline and what does not conform to these rules. In science, for example, to test a given proposition we may need to design an experiment that controls for other interfering variables in the form of a fair test.
Alexander et al. (1991) argue that beside strategic knowledge (i.e. knowledge of appropriate and legitimate strategies) there must also be self-knowledge. This form of knowledge concerns the learner’s capacity to regulate their cognitive processing and involves an ability to recognise errors and to monitor one’s thinking. These various strands of the typology can be presented in diagrammatic form by way of a summary of Alexander et al’s (1991) schema.
A Typology of Knowledge Acquisition
Types of Knowledge
Procedural (Knowing what +
Knowing how)
Conceptual (Development of ideas: their
function & use)
Metacognitive (Self- regulation of cognitive
processes)
Declarative knowledge +
Conditional Knowledge
Domain knowledge Discipline knowledge
+
Discourse knowledge = syntactic + rhetorical
knowledge
Strategic knowledge +
Self- knowledge
A framework for learning?
During this process of acquiring these three different types of knowledge there must be a shift in the way that information is processed. At the core of this transformation, according to Bereiter (1991) is a distinction between learning as an additive process and learning as reorganisation. This view is in some ways very similar to the model of learning put forward by Bennett et al. (1984) in their attempt to determine how well primary teachers matched tasks to their pupils’ immediate needs. Among various categories these researchers distinguished between tasks that were designed to provide pupils with new knowledge in incremental steps and those that taught them to restructure existing knowledge so that problems could be examined in new ways or pupils could discover rules or ideas for themselves. Within Alexander et al’s (1991) typology, which to a degree appears also to be a hierarchy, children move from a point where they acquire knowledge that is already known by others, to a point where they can order that knowledge within particular frameworks, to a further point where they can, without too much assistance, interrogate their own thought processes in creating their personal frameworks or restructuring existing ones. It is in this sense therefore that pupils eventually become “metacognitively wise.”
Alexander (this time Robin), (2001: 344) is unhappy with some of Patricia Alexander’s definitions. He criticises, in particular, the use of procedural knowledge as a ‘catch all’ term. He prefers to separate knowledge acquisition (declarative knowledge) from knowledge of routines, which can be defined as knowing where to gain such knowledge and how best to use it (conditional knowledge). One of the reasons why Robin Alexander is keen to sub divide procedural knowledge is because his interest in classroom discourse leads him to emphasise the importance of Edwards and Mercer’s (1987) distinction between principled and ritual knowledge. Edwards and Mercer point out that one purpose of teaching rules and relationships is to lead pupils to an understanding of certain principles (the way certain kinds of knowledge are organised) which belongs to the second of Patricia Alexander’s typology categories of knowledge as conceptualisation. But learning a rule can also lead to merely repetitive performance in which the rules or procedures are memorised but cannot be applied in novel settings in a way that would support deeper understanding.
Desforges (2003: 20) illustrates this by a story of a teacher who taught vocabulary by writing words and their definitions on the board and then getting the children to memorise everything that he had written. In the next lesson, as a practice/extension task, the class were asked to make up a sentence using the new vocabulary. One of the words on the list was ‘stimulate’ which the teacher had defined as to ‘stir up.’
One pupil wrote as her sentence, ‘Mother stimulated the soup.’
There is obviously a case to be made for sometimes learning rules as a series of rituals such as, for example, learning the 10 times table. One of the key differences noted by the author when sitting in P1 classes in Hong Kong in comparison with UK classrooms is the extensive time taken over learning definitions and rules in the first years of formal schooling. In one classroom, for example, a whole 60 minute lesson was devoted to identifying the key characteristics which define rectangles. Children were encouraged to bring various empty packages (fruit juice cartons, washing powder etc.) from home, draw around the outlines and identify the rectangular shapes.
The next lesson investigated the special case of the square, the next irregular rectangular shapes. In another class, the children played a variety of number games designed to create fluency in counting and manipulating numerals from one to ten.
Hong Kong pupils top the international league tables in mathematics, yet from an English perspective these lessons appeared to ‘over-teach’ these topics. Similar examples to the Hong Kong approach can be found in some continental European countries. In Switzerland, for example, children entering the primary school after the age of six and a quarter spend much of the first year mastering the decimal number system in performing the four basic arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction etc.).
The evidence suggests that this initial extended concentration on manipulating numbers, much of it through rapid oral question and answer sessions, pays off later on where 11 year old Swiss pupils were observed successfully completing tasks that are generally set for Year 14 in England (Prais 1997).
There is, of course, no way of knowing how an individual pupil perceives rules and procedures other than when he or she comes to use them. We know from the study of experts, and by definition experts must be metacognitively wise, that they have a principled understanding of rules whereas the less competent performer generally has a ritualised one Berliner (1994). Competent performers typically go through a recitation of the rules and by a process of trial and error attempt to find the one which applies in a given case. Experts, on the other hand, seek to reconceptualise the problem in ways which allow them to identify the most appropriate rule to apply.
The latter process is much faster and explains why Grand Masters at chess can take on and often beat the computer. Thus making the distinction between principled and ritualised knowledge, while useful in the analysis of discourse and for helping teachers to think about the way a task should be structured, doesn’t in practice require changes in Patricia Alexander et al’s (1991) typology provided, as is implied by these writers, that the three categories are viewed as part of a continuum. This is because, for Patricia Alexander, the acquisition of declarative knowledge involving rules or routines are a means to an end (that end being to make pupils metacognitively wise) so that her main concerns are with principled rather than ritual knowledge. Further, from the point of view of developing an appropriate pedagogy for teaching rules and routines it matters little whether the desired outcome is to promoting Bereiter’s (1991)
‘additive learning’ (as with learning the ten times table) or learning as ‘reorganisation’
(as with teaching vocabulary definitions of words such as stimulate to use in sentences) since the principles of instruction are much the same.
Learning as information processing
That being said, there seems a remarkable degree of agreement, as Desforges (2003) has claimed, concerning the implications for teaching what Patricia Alexander et al.
(1991) term procedural knowledge. At its simplest, learning can be conceived as a series of outcomes which result in an enduring change in knowledge or skill as a result from exposure to some experience. These outcomes are then committed to memory. Bredo (1997) has claimed that this kind of learning is underpinned by behaviourist theories, because it envisages the knowledge to be acquired can be broken down into small steps and a degree of reinforcement can then be provided at various points along the way whenever success has been achieved. Such learning is also said to be associationist because one important technique for retaining this new knowledge in the memory is to build up chains whereby certain stimuli produce specific responses. Watkins (2003) describes this process as “learning is being taught” or LBT for short.
More generally the kinds of processes used to acquire this form of learning can be encompassed within a general model known as information processing. According to Meadows (1993, p 213) the term is a collective noun for a series of explanations about how children use certain cognitive processes in order to process information that they acquire. The early theorists such as Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) suggested a parallel existed with computer hardware and computer software in their account of the memory system and distinguished between the memory structure, which is analogous to the computer hardware, and the manner in which the memory is controlled which is analogous to the software. Successful learning therefore depends ultimately on the speed of operation and the memory capacity. According to this simple model, the mind like a digital computer has both short and long term memory stores and a central processing unit. The unit exercises executive control by utilising specific procedures and routines when solving particular problems. Many of these problems in computing are solved by a process of approximation and iteration. With the latter procedure, the first solution is arrived at by guesswork, perhaps on the basis of previous experience. This guess is then used for the initial calculation and the result fed back into the programme to provide a better solution. The result of this second calculation is again put back into the system and the process goes on till very little improvement can be detected in successive iterations. This process of successive iteration clearly has parallels with the view of thinking adopted by Bennett et al (1984) which they termed restructuring and tuning. Central to the theory is the idea of rehearsal (or practice) Meadows 1993:213) which enables information to be retained in the working memory (analogous to the central processor) for longer periods of time, and makes it more likely that it will be retained in the long-term memory store for subsequent retrieval.
Classroom studies by Alton-Lee & Nuthall (1992) and Nuthall (2000, 2004) have supported and developed these ideas regarding the function of the working memory.
He and his research partner, Adrienne Alton-Lee, a former primary teacher, found that information that was relevant for successfully answering multiple-choice test items correctly was unlikely to be retained for more than two days, unless linked to other representations already in the working memory or which again entered the memory on the subsequent day. These researchers also found that pupils could generate simple constructs when there was an appropriate mix in the working memory consisting of a combination of specific information, generalisations, visual stimuli, word meanings and skills. In any one instance, the most effective combination depended on the task demand so that a test question asking pupils to write down the temperature recorded on an accompanying picture of a thermometer was more likely to be answered correctly if the pupil had experience of carrying out the practical procedure of measuring temperature.
This brief account is a relatively simple presentation of the main ideas behind the information processing models of cognition, but nevertheless sufficient to meet the aim of establishing some general principles of teaching based on this working model of how pupils learn. As Meadows (1993: 223) argues, while the models work well for
“tasks which require conscious effort and strategic thought,” they are less helpful in explaining tasks which children in the nursery appear to perform spontaneously (e.g.
building a tower out of rectangular blocks). Perhaps more crucially in the search for suitable working theories of learning, information processing fails to account for, what might be termed ‘instantaneous restructuring,’ where one’s ideas are
transformed in a moment of inspiration rather than through the process of iteration discussed earlier.
Learning as constructing and reconstructing knowledge
This leads to the second possible working theory of learning based on the idea of constructivism. Whereas the computer analogy tends to see the take-up of information as a somewhat passive activity, at least initially, the constructivist approach regards the process as an interactive one. According to Piaget, for example, new information interacts with what we already know in two main ways. First, the new information is modified so that the brain can assimilate what we all ready know and second, what we know already is modified to accommodate this new information. Thus in the earlier example of classification the pupil may well include a whale within the category of mammals because of similarities in the way its offspring are produced and reared, while ignoring the other characteristics that would associate it more closely with fish and other water creatures. Once, however, these latter characteristics are taken into account it becomes necessary for the pupil to modify the original conception of what constitutes a mammal, because of the cognitive conflict that arises when all the salient features of the whale are identified.
This kind of learning has been described as an active process of sense making.
According to Conner (2004) “learning is determined by what goes on in children’s heads and with how they make sense of the world. They do this by relating experience to existing organised concepts and principles which vary with each individual’s past experience”. In this approach the process of gaining new knowledge (or applying that new knowledge to different contexts) is seen as actively constructing and then reconstructing one’s ideas. The process involves relating these new experiences to existing concepts which in turn are conditioned by previous experience. Watkins (2003) taking a similar approach also describes this kind of learning as individual sense making or LIS for short. In contrast to LBT there is therefore no assumption at the outset that the learner is essentially a blank canvas or an empty container into which new knowledge must the programmed. Instead, the starting point is a belief that each individual has partial understanding of the world which s/he brings to every new experience. Thus in one lesson on evaporation for a class of 10 year olds the author placed a full glass of water onto a hot radiator at the start of the school day. By the afternoon some of the water had disappeared. To the question, “Where has the water gone?” the pupils offered a variety of answers among which were, “You drank it Sir!” “The glass has got bigger.” and “Some of the water has escaped into the air.” In this situation, therefore, the teacher needs to find a starting point that takes account of individual pupil differences, unlike the simple information processing model where a definition of evaporation would be presented to the class either verbally or more probably by means of a demonstration.
One metaphor which has been used to describe the role of the teacher within this constructivist framework is that of ‘teacher as a gardener’ since primary teachers are very fond of horticultural metaphors (Cortazzi 1991). Successful gardeners are skilled at planting seeds in suitable soil and aiding propagation by a combination of judicious watering and the application of fertiliser. In the same way teachers are seen to foster this process of construction and reconstruction by providing the necessary stimulating environment (soil conditions) offering well thought-out
interventions (judicious watering) and engaging in supportive feedback by way of encouragement (fertiliser application).
Critics of the LIS (Learning as Individual Sense making) model argue that an important defect is its lack of attention to cultural influences (Daniels 2001). If the critics ask, the process simply involves an individual attempting to make sense of the surrounding world why is it that the concepts that pupils with similar cultural backgrounds acquire have so much in common? For example, the notion of creativity in western countries places a high value on the uniqueness of what is produced, whereas in Pacific Rim countries it pays greater attention on striving for perfection. In one school visited by the author in Hong Kong, for example, the head teacher was a master calligrapher who enjoyed great esteem as an artist. His sole life’s work as an artist consisted of repeated attempts to reproduce a perfect reproduction of the earliest manuscripts of the basic one-thousand characters that constitute the main source of all written communication in the Chinese language.
Socio-cultural contexts in learning
The answer to the above question, according to Bredo (1997) is that all learning is situated within a specific context. In this approach learning is seen as a form of apprenticeship whereby the learner engages in the process of cognitive development within a community as a way of gradually gaining acceptance as a full member of that community (Brown and Campione 1990; Lave and Wenger 1999). It extends the notion of reconstruction and construction but in a social context, so that the learner instead of being stimulated solely by the interaction with the environment now does so mainly by engaging in discourse with others who are more knowledgeable (Watkins 2003). For this reason it is often referred to as social constructivism. One of the best examples of this kind of learning occurs in the training of teachers. There would be few practitioners who would argue that they learnt more from their college courses than they did in working alongside their colleagues during teaching practice.
Watkins (2003:14) terms this form of learning as ‘building knowledge as part of doing things with others’ (LBKO).
The theory that underpins learning as LBKO is derived mainly from the work of the Russian psychologist, Vygotsky. At the heart of this theory, according to Wood (1998:10) is the role of instruction in human development. One of the best known of Vygotsky’s concepts is the zone of proximal development (ZPD) which he defined as
“the gap which exists for an individual child between what he is able to do alone and what he can achieve with help from one more knowledgeable or skilled than himself”
(Wood 1998:26). This leads to a definition of readiness which Wood defines as “the capacity to learn with help.” This contrasts with the position commonly attributed to Piaget, which conceives of readiness as largely dependent on an individual’s current stage of development that varies from child to child. Robin Alexander (2001: 425) takes a similar view to that of Wood, quoting Vygotsky’s maxim that “the only good teaching is that which outpaces development.” He prefers a different translation of the ZPD which replaces the word, proximal by either next or potential, because this emphasises the importance of teachers having high expectations when helping children through the zone (Alexander 2008b:11).
More importantly, in the search for simple but useful working models of learning that can be used to fashion certain principles of teaching Smith (1999: 159) argues that
that most viewpoints [whether individual (LIS) or socially constructivist LBKO)]
would agree to the following propositions:
1. Construction is undertaken by learners not teachers,
2. Learners’ constructions make use of available beliefs and expectations in grappling for new ones,
3. Teaching can provide the opportunity for, not the guarantee of, even the transmission of knowledge, and
4. Construction always involves socio-cultural construction.
Shayer (1997) agrees that for the purpose of devising an effective strategy of intervention in the classroom, as a means of promoting cognitive acceleration in pupils, it makes little sense to distinguish between these different constructivist approaches. Brown and Palincsar (1986 pp 34-5) also argue that it is a mistake to see Piaget’s ideas about child development in direct opposition to that of Vygotsky.
They suggest that the two theories are different ends of a continuum and in support of this view they represent the process of learning as ‘theory change’. Some changes can be brought about by supportive (social) interaction while others can arise out of a situation where new experience conflicts with our existing knowledge producing the necessary degree of cognitive conflict. In a nice and apt description they make the point that at one extreme, that of the social interactionist, we hold conversations with others whereas at the other extreme of the continuum, that of the lone scientist, we have similar conversations with ourselves. The essential point, however, is that the nature of the discourse is the same or similar in both cases (Brown and Campione 1994). Thus in seeking to create a simple working model of learning as a process of construction and reconstruction it seems that there is much to be said for combining Watkins’ (2003) two categories, Learning as Individual Sense making (LIS) and Learning through building knowledge as part of doing things with others (LBKO).
Learning as developing expertise
When talking about learning, particularly when referring to ways that demonstrate their pupils’ increased understanding, teachers use a variety of descriptions (Entwistle and Smith 2002). They talk about pupils “internalising knowledge and skills,”
“working out the rules or patterns,” “making concrete versus abstract representations”
and “organising ideas and reasoning”. Primary teachers, however, more often talk about pupils as “independent learners” or “independent thinkers” and this seems to imply something more than the ability to argue with oneself as suggested by Brown and Palincsar (1986). Patricia Alexander (2004:10) contends that the study of expertise (and by definition experts must be independent thinkers) in the academic context is a neglected area of research. She argues that the acquisition of knowledge is a core objective for education and that a key aspect in this process is the ways in which individuals move away from a reliance on others for the acquisition of knowledge to a process where they can “discover it for themselves”. However, the research into expertise which took place in the 1970s and 1980s was primarily dominated by the notion of ‘artificial intelligence.’ The researchers sought to determine the characteristics of expert problem solvers so that these features could be programmed into ‘intelligent machines’ or used to train non-experts. This has limited the application of this research to school settings, partly because in the work on artificial intelligence most attention has been paid to differences between novices and experts and not with process by which one makes the journey from one extreme to another. Alexander (2004:12) argues that since students will rarely leave school
at eighteen as experts in any subject domain it is the process of transformation into experts through the stages of acclimation, competence and proficiency that are most relevant to teachers. At the acclimation stage pupils begin to grasp the elements of strategic knowledge (Shulman 1986) which help constitute a domain (the forms of legitimate knowledge, what counts as evidence, ways of establishing the validity of a proposition etc). But because these pupils lack the ability to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate (or relevant and tangential) information they are hampered in their thinking which therefore operates at a surface level. At the competence stage pupils’ domain knowledge is more comprehensive and principled and a mixture of surface and deep level strategies are used. The final transformation towards proficiency and expertise is marked by a shift away from these “surface level”
thinking strategies towards those which are of a “deep processing kind” and a capacity to engage in problem finding as well as problem solving.
This stress on the importance of situating the development of expertise within he different knowledge domains recognises that academic disciplines are at the centre of formal schooling and that any working theory needs to relate to this ‘unique socio-cultural context’ (Sternberg 2003). However cognitive processes by which this expert knowledge is acquired and gradually honed are common and concern what in her earlier writing Patricia Alexander et al (1991) defined as metacognitive knowledge. To become an independent thinker requires an individual to have knowledge of their own cognitive processes. There are two essential parts to this knowledge, one which concerns the development of a repertoire of strategies that can be used when confronted with a problem, and the other which consists of control mechanism that can decide which strategies are likely to lead to success and which to failure. In scientific hypothesising, for example, Alexander et al (1991) argue that there is a need to develop mechanisms for evaluating different guesses, predicting the best solutions and for developing ways of testing these predictions.
It follows from the previous paragraphs that there is a specific role for teachers in helping children to become “metacognitively wise”. Indeed, Robin Alexander (1995:
31) has suggested that one of the key problems that can arise in primary schools when teachers seek to turn children into independent thinkers is the adoption of the maxim that “we mustn’t teach, we must let them learn”. Alexander objects strongly to this position.
“Underlying this [is a] simple confusion of teaching with telling which can be readily sorted out. Once this is done there is a genuine pedagogical issue the degree of the teacher’s mediation in the child’s learning. I use mediation in the most neutral term available but of course the linguistic minefield here is a pretty extensive one and many of the other words of common currency carry strong adverse loading – direction, intervention, pushing, interfering, forcing, intruding. The competing imperatives therefore are clear and acute. While ideology dictates a teacher’s role of facilitator and encourager, common sense (not to mention recent classroom research) indicates the benefit for children of powerful interventions by teachers, especially the kind which generate cognitive challenge.”
There are some researchers, who while agreeing with Alexander’s proposition that it is important for teachers to present their pupils with situations which challenge existing thinking frameworks, would by inference suggest that the teachers’ role in developing expertise is limited. This is because they view experts as people who are born and not made. Thus both Gardner (1995) in respect to art and music and Noice and Noice (1997) with regard to acting consider natural inherited talent to be the main