ABSTRACT
How can we assist students to develop skilful learning strategies? There has been much tension in the field between the notion of the classroom teacher as an instructor, or direct change agent, and teacher as the facilitator or ‘guide on the side’. One of the messages from the VL synthesis is that scores of studies support the notion of teacher as a direct change agent or activator. Table 9.1 shows some of the effect sizes evident in this area, when achievement test scores are used as the measure. The notion of teacher as a facilitator is flawed if this brings a deemphasis upon stimulating knowledge acquisition through clear and direct instructional methods. Advances in student learning are related strongly to the nature (in terms of both quality and quantity) of the instruction that teachers provide during the course of normal lessons. But how direct should such instruction be? And what if the content to be taught involves complex cognition?
