Learning strategies in middle childhood

Ogles, Malcolm (1993) Learning strategies in middle childhood. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

The importance of cognitive strategies in learning, remembering, problem-solving and thinking has been widely acknowledged. Strategies are concerned with the control and regulation of information processing and play a major role in cognition by enabling learners to focus attention on relevant aspects of tasks and use past learning efficiently. Utilising strategies contributes to successful task performance by making effective use of limited processing resources, and therefore, strategy possession enhances learning. Children acquire a range of cognitive and metacognitive strategies during their development and it is argued that, by middle childhood, some may have begun to develop general learning strategies and reflective awareness of the processes of learning sufficient to enable them to learn how to learn. The potential significance of strategy deployment to educational success has given rise to many attempts to instruct children in the use of strategies which may advance their learning, although relatively little attention has been paid to the strategies pupils may be utilising in the course of their everyday classroom work.

Three studies are reported which examine this aspect of educational task performance in detail. Structured interview methods were used to ascertain the approaches used by pupils across a range of work, with data derived from verbal reports being analysed in conjunction with on-task observation of learning behaviour and scrutiny of work produced. Results demonstrated that a high proportion of pupils' work efforts involved strategy deployment with some children using general learning and metacognitive strategies effectively across tasks. There was evidence that a variety of strategies could be of equal benefit to learning.

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