ABSTRACT
Successive English governments have focused particularly on closing the achievement gap through different approaches to school improvement, general education policy and social initiatives. Primarily the unit focuses on personalising tasks and feedback, and on helping pupils to improve how they understand their own learning through self-regulation. This chapter is concerned with pedagogic practices that can help in the struggle to raise achievement through matching learning tasks to pupils’ strengths and supporting them effectively where necessary. Raising achievement is a vital part of education and so the means and commitment required to close the gap extend beyond the teacher in the classroom. When researching theory and ideas about how to support pupils’ achievement, it is worth searching for the terms ‘underachievement’ and ‘underachiever’. Self-regulated learning, also called ‘self-regulation’, refers to the use of strategies and techniques that helps pupils to reflect actively on their attitudes and to adapt behaviours to improve the achievement of suitable goals to improve learning.
