ABSTRACT
The chapter first describes some recent psychological research that has relevance for learning in schools. In particular this work shows that the way something is learnt (and therefore the way it should be taught) depends on the anticipated circumstances of its retrieval. In the light of this, our concern has to shift from ‘teaching for acquisition’ where the focus is solely on the learning event, to ‘teaching for use’, where we must be concerned with the degree of congruence between the contexts of learning and recapitulation. This follows from the realization that things are not stored cognitively in such a way that, once learnt, they become automatically available when subsequently needed. Rather a description of when to retrieve them is built in right from the start. This section in effect provides an empirical rationale for the minitheoretic approach to learning I described in Chapter 3.
