By Yin Nwe Ko

WE HAVE got children who are our own or not. They can be named our fu­ture generations. It is natural that older people or adults always lay genuine seeds for their new gen­erations from time to time. In this process, society gets flourished. No one can deny it. However, it is general. In reality, older people or adults especially only teachers can perform this responsibility effectively and successfully. In so­ciety, the role of teachers cannot be forgotten. Moreover, to become a better society, teachers are es­sential and the techniques they will have to utilize to make their students bloom are more essential than any other one.

Teachers today are encour­aged to help their learners develop life competencies during each life stage of education from pre-pri­mary to secondary. 21st-century course materials integrate oppor­tunities to work on competencies such as communication, collabo­ration, creative thinking, critical thinking, social responsibilities, and learning to learn. They offer the teacher a range of activities and ideas to encourage and mo­tivate their learners to develop these competencies.

Among those six main com­petencies, we can have identified in the Life Competencies Frame­work is the last one i.e., learning to learn. So, why is it important for our learners to develop learning to learn skills at school and how will such skills equip them for life be­yond secondary school education?

Learning to learn is the ability to pursue and persist in learn­ing, to organize one’s learning, including effective management of the time and information both individually and in groups.

Learning to learn strategies include any thoughts, behaviours, beliefs, or emotions that facilitate the acquisition, understanding, or later application and transfer of new knowledge and skills in differ­ent performance contexts. They range from active rehearsal to help remember word lists, to the use of elaboration and organiza­tion to encode, integrate, and later recall or apply knowledge across several content areas. Learning to learn strategies help generate meaning for the new information that is to be learned. Repeating the names of the planets in or­der, organizing the discoveries of the great explorers by creating timelines and mind maps, and comparing and contrasting the causes of World War I and World War II, are all examples of learn­ing strategies.

They all are designed to help the learner generate meaning and store the new information in mem­ory in a manner that will facilitate integration with related knowl­edge and increase the probability of later recall and use, particularly in transfer contexts.

A learning strategy is also a plan for orchestrating cognitive resources to help reach a learning goal. Learning to learn strategies have several characteristics in common.

First, they are goal-directed. Learning strategies are used to help meet a standard of perfor­mance or to reach a learning goal.

Second, learning strategies are intentionally invoked, which implies at least some level of ac­tive selection. The selection of one or more of these strategies is de­termined by a number of factors, such as a student’s prior expe­rience with the strategy, his or her prior experience with similar learning tasks, his or her ability to deal with distractions, and the student’s commitment to his or her goals.

Third, cognitive learning strategies are effortful; they re­quire time and often involve using multiple, highly interactive steps. Because of the effort required, a student must be motivated to initiate and maintain strategy use (e.g., see Motivation, Learning, and Instruction). In addition, the student must believe that the strategy will be effective and that he or she can be successful using the strategy.

Finally, cognitive learning strategies are not universally ap­plicable—they are situation-spe­cific. The student’s goals, the task requirements, the context, and other factors all interact to help determine which strategy may be best. To be successful in selecting and using a strategy, a student must understand under what cir­cumstances a given strategy is, or is not appropriate.

When developing learning-to-learn competencies in the second­ary classroom we are equipping our learners with the practical skills to participate in, take control of, reflect on and evaluate their learning in higher education and the workplace.

Students in higher education are expected to be more independ­ent and less reliant on their tutors and play an active role in directing their learning. Being equipped with a variety of study skills and knowing how to use them effec­tively is crucial. Examples include the ability to create an effective learning environment without dis­tractions, or being able to manage time effectively to stay focused and meet deadlines.

In higher education, students are fully responsible for organizing the time they spend outside class to work on projects and assign­ments or to prepare for exams. We know from our understanding of how memory works that the hu­man brain can retain and retrieve information more effectively when we review it systematically.

Therefore, for example, a university student who paces their learning uses mind maps or graphic organizers to make clear, structured notes from their lecture notes or own reading and reviews them periodically during peak concentration levels will im­prove their learning outcomes far more effectively than a student who opts to spend hours cram­ming for an exam the night be­fore. This “distributed practice” or spacing out study times into short, regular sessions over a long period will undoubtedly have a positive impact on their learning.

In addition to distributed practice, learners should aim to make the retrieval of information as useful as possible by not only recalling the information but ap­plying it to answer a specific exam question, solve a certain problem or complete a particular task as part of a piece of coursework. Learners need to be able to identi­fy and select relevant information by making connections.

Those students who have been shown how to use graphic organizers and make connections to organize information will be better equipped to identify which information is necessary to com­plete a task or answer a ques­tion and identify which further relevant information they need to source. So, it is not simply a case of regurgitating information but retrieving it in a useful way. Students who were encouraged at school to regularly create and carry out low-stakes quizzes to review course content or explain how to answer certain questions to their peers will be better able to review information effectively.

Higher education students today are expected to know how to reflect on and evaluate their learn­ing to achieve desired learning outcomes. At college or university, they will need to plan schemes of work and keep a record of the progress made. They will also be expected to carry out longer writ­ten assignments and projects and may need to work collaboratively with others to produce them.

Students who have had the opportunity to use formative as­sessment at school will have had invaluable experience in reflecting on their learning and becoming more involved in the learning pro­cess. They will be used to reflect on the success of their learning and identify where their learning needs to go next. This training will help them stay focused dur­ing projects and assignments at university as they systematically reflect on their progress at vari­ous stages of the process, identity what the next steps are, and have a clear idea of how to go about achieving them.

One of the most useful skills they will have developed is how to identify what information is need­ed and how to source it. Identify­ing which member of a team is best prepared to contribute cer­tain skills or knowledge or develop certain parts of the project will also improve its overall execution. As autonomous learners, they will also be better equipped to manage the resources available, source reliable information either online or from the library or self-study centre, and use this information appropriately while avoiding pla­giarism and respecting copyright.

Curriculum policies increas­ingly focus on competencies that students are expected to devel­op during the whole process of learning across specific subjects or disciplines and that they need to succeed in education and for per­sonal development, employment, and inclusion in a knowledge soci­ety. A variety of terms are used to indicate these competencies, the most frequent ones being compe­tences or competencies (defined as key, core, general, generic, basic, cross-curricular, or trans­versal competencies) and skills (defined as key, foundation, core, basic, essential, cross-thematic, cross-curricular or 21st-century skills). Beyond the European Un­ion area, several organizations, partnerships, and consortia have defined and endorsed different core competencies/skills frame­works.

All of these competencies that our students further develop dur­ing their time in higher education will also be relevant and neces­sary in the future workplace. It is clear that building up a wide range of learning to learn skills during our formative years will stand us in very good stead for the years ahead.

Reference: Teaching Teen