ABSTRACT
Like many initiatives which gradually gather momentum, resources and their own integrity, the Oxfordshire Skills Programme has a long evolutionary tail. In the early 1960s the skills of learning to learn were associated, in the classroom, with enquiry methods; they were to be an essential bond in interdisciplinary studies which broke out of the didactic constraints of specialist subjects. An end product of our thinking through these varied experiences is, in terms of a separate course approach to cognitive thinking and learning skills, the Oxfordshire Skills Programme. The language of the middle-class home was more likely than that of the working-class home to be hypothetical and reflective. Many assumptions are made; thus syllabuses call for an emphasis on developing skills in a way which enables the learner to transfer them from one context to another. But the fact is that little is known of methods which facilitate transfer.
