Helping students to become capable learners

The main aim of this article is to argue that the need for teachers and their schools to prepare their students for life beyond their school-days must be met by requiring teachers themselves to both achieve this aim and produce the evidence of their students' capability as learners. In so doing, they must change their classroom teaching from a focus on transmission of content knowledge to the active involvement of students in open-ended and collaborative learning. Achievement of this aim requires that some specific features of pedagogy be implemented in classrooms. In order to do this, teachers will have to develop the linked skills of design of activities, of guidance of students' progress, of the adaptation of the design through teacher-student and student-student interaction, and of making assessments at the many stages of implementation and as a final summation of achievement. So a secondary aim of this article is to review the evidence for work which has studied the development of these skills with and by teachers.