ABSTRACT
Teaching-learning is always a partnership. The teacher’s expertise in teaching has to be complemented by the student’s expertise in learning. While much thought and effort have gone into training teachers how to teach, much less goes into the latter: indeed, learning to learn is usually seen as a natural spin-off of learning X, Y or Z. It is widely assumed that by the time students come to the end of compulsory education, they will have picked up or found out how to learn. Otherwise how would they have got that far? There is some truth in this but the relatively high rates of non-completion or failure in some areas of post-school education (particularly FE) suggest that we need to take learning to learn more seriously. That need is also evident in the years leading up to GCSE in secondary school, as students prepare for major, public tests of their achievement. And uncertainty about, or lack of self-confidence in, learning may also deter some adults from embarking on courses that they might otherwise attend. Thus where the previous section explored the teacher’s problems of delivery, this one looks at the other side of the coin: the student’s capacity to learn.
