ABC-Learning

Teachers and students usually believe that good study habits and effective group work are absolutely necessary for the development of deeper understanding. However, a lot of educational and psychological research has shown many common practices, in both areas, to be ineffective. These workshops will help teachers gain the knowledge and experience to design their lessons to optimize the practices that have been shown to have high effectiveness.

The workshops

The first day will explore the use of study practices such as self-testing (retrieval practice), elaboration, dual coding and the use of concept maps of concrete examples. It will show how individual, pair and small group application of these can be combined with metacognition to enhance the effectiveness of this learning. These practices will be applied in a highly interactive way to a variety of subject and age-specific contexts.

The second day will demonstrate how a variety of stimuli can be used to initiate and structure genuine dialogue in group discussions. The theory and practice of teacher mediation of student thinking will be illustrated. The essential elements in designing lessons that develop student thinking will be a constant theme of the workshop.