ABSTRACT
It has long been recognized that the cognitive strategies that pupils use when tackling a learning task are a major influence on the quality of the learning outcome (Marton and Saljo, 1976a; Paris and Oka, 1986). ‘People rely on cognitive strategies to promote learning, remembering and problem solving’ (Paris, 1988, p. 299). Pupils must engage in some form of cognitive strategy to build connections between new ideas, and relate new ideas to prior knowledge (Mayer, 1988; Weinstein and Mayer, 1986). ‘Learning and thinking strategies and skills are the tools we use to meet our learning goals’ (Weinstein, 1994, p. 259), and would appear to be of most benefit if metacognitive ability is developed concomitantly. Cognitive strategies are beneficial to learning, they can be identified and they can be developed (Kirby and Lawson, 1983; Weinstein and Mayer, 1986). Indeed, cognitive strategy development has provided positive results to pupils of all ages and abilities (Mayo, 1993) regardless of material format and whether strategies are used publicly or privately (Patterson, Dansereau and Newbern, 1992). In support of these claims, cognitive strategy use has been considered crucial to both reading achievement and to the learning of a new language (Chen, 1990; Paris and Oka, 1986). Resnick (1987) suggested that cognitive strategies may not only allow people of limited education to participate in cognitively complex activity systems, but also enhance the capacity of highly educated people well beyond what they could do independently.
