ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to establish ways of working and organising for learning that will help teachers to provide contexts and activities that will prove to be effective and lead to the promotion of effective – and enjoyable – learning. Learners need enough previous knowledge and understanding to enable them to learn new things; they also need help making links with new and previous knowledge explicit. Children's awareness of their own learning, their thought processes, should be promoted. By promoting this awareness, teachers are encouraging metacognitive activity. Teachers can aim to achieve 'relaxed alertness' in their pupils by the ways in which they organise their teaching and classrooms and the ways in which they respond to their pupils. Teachers, by applying what is known about learning and developing rich learning experiences based on prior knowledge, social interaction and metacognitive ideas, in appropriate contexts and taking into account various conditions considered to be beneficial to effective learning, are in a privileged position.
