Cultivating pre-service and in-service teachers’ abilities to deepen understanding and promote learning strategy use in pupils

Abstract

Twenty-first-century skills education attempts to deepen understanding and promote effective learning strategies use among pupils. To accomplish this goal, we need to elucidate ways to enrich teachers’ competencies. In this chapter, we introduce two practices to develop pre-service and in-service teachers’ competence in promoting pupils’ understanding and use of effective learning strategies. In the first practice, trainees in a university educational methods course experienced one-on-one tutoring (cognitive counseling) to assess and support learners who had difficulty in studying. In the second practice, elementary school teachers engaged in a new type of class called Thinking After Instruction (TAI) and lesson studies. We examined how these practices changed the teaching approaches employed by the in-service and pre-service teachers.