Learn to Teach Teach to Learn

Learn to Teach explores the most up-to-date findings on how children learn, to help teachers create effective learning environments and plan for teaching. Drawing on a neo-Vygotskian approach to learning, it covers the purpose of education; socio-cultural approaches to human cognition; attention and intelligence as cognitive tools; and the role of mindsets, memory and language in learning. It promotes the idea that the mind is a cultural product and that education is best understood as fostering the development of valued cognitive tools appropriate for the twenty-first century. To provide readers with a holistic understanding of learning, the book explores the significant contributions to the study of learning and teaching from psychologists, sociologists and cultural theorists. Readers are encouraged to critically engage with - and challenge - some of the prevailing learning theories in order to better understand their students. Each chapter features classroom observation exercises, discussion questions and links to further reading.

Introduction; 1. Ideas that shape thinking about learning and teaching; 2. Culture and education; 3. Natural pedagogy; 4. Intelligence; 5. Cognitive processes in the classroom; 6. Memory processes: making it stick; 7. Non-cognitive factors in school success; 8. Experts and novices; 9. Teaching unplugged: talk for learning; 10. Assessment and feedback: teaching's engine room.

Catherine Scott is a Senior Lecturer at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne.