Accelerating learning

last updated:September 2010

How might you accelerate your pupils’ learning?

Research evidence

The past 20 years have seen a good deal of research into how pupil learning can be accelerated. The range of approaches that has been developed is commonly called ‘thinking skills’. Techniques for developing thinking skills include:

• preparing pupils for the task – ensuring they understand the initial problem
• the setting of a challenge that contains surprises or ideas in tension (cognitive conflict)
• collaborative work with other pupils to solve the challenge (social construction of knowledge)
• shared thinking aloud about their own thinking processes (metacognition) and,
• using skills and insights newly acquired in one context to consider a problem in another (bridging).

Pupils who use thinking skills approaches benefit from improved reasoning and problem-solving skills; for example they are better able to identify and use the correct methods for organising information and recognising more than one way to tackle and solve a problem.

Your evidence

You might like to ask a colleague to observe a lesson and discuss with you how far you promote thinking skills approaches. For example, do you:

• encourage pupils to work in groups to solve problems or unravel surprising data?
• set pupils tasks which challenge their existing ideas and beliefs and which they can approach from a range of angles?
• encourage metacognitive discussion and reflection between pupils?
• offer a sequence of activities that enable pupils to apply skills and insights learned in one activity to the next?

Next steps

• Now that you have an idea of how far you make use of thinking skills approaches, how could you use the information to help you further develop these approaches?
• Have you considered giving pupils regular problem solving tasks which require them to reflect on their thinking? 
• Could you involve your pupils more actively in talking to each other to unpack their thinking about one topic and explore how it connects to another?