“Metacognitive process!” said the researcher.

It was an exciting moment. Shirley Larkin, from the Centre for the Advancement of Thinking at King’s College London, has been working on raising Year 1 pupils’ ability to think about thinking. She has evidence that this can be done and points to studies that suggest it has practical value for all learning. Having trained some teachers, she observed the work that followed and found results that compared favouably with other approaches, such as the numeracy hour. Her report is one of 30 papers, now on-line, from the first annual conference of the Economic and Social Research Council’s teaching and learning research programme.

With papers on infants, further education and university students there is something for everyone in the set. A full list is available at www.ex.ac.ukESRC-TLRPconfintro.htm

Readers can email suggestions on future Internet Insights to Sam Saunders at J.P.Saunders@leeds.ac.uk