Teaching development grants final and financial report: Developing metacognitive teaching skills through a tripartite school partnership model

Since the introduction of the Learning to Learn 2.0 curriculum document (CDC, 2015), metacognitive teaching has come to the forefront as an innovative research agenda in teacher education. The key concept underpinning Learning to Learn 2.0 is that of teachers developing students’ generic skills including decision making, planning, and problem solving. All these skills can be conceptualized as metacognitive skills. Studies show that providing an authentic environment and consultative support to student-teachers can help them to master metacognitive teaching skills effectively. As a leading university of teaching, we have a responsibility to support student teachers to acquire such knowledge and skills – if they are successfully implement the Learning to Learn 2.0 curriculum. A training guide for metacognitive teaching will be developed for our student teachers – which will be adopted in the Master of Teaching (MTeach) Programme. A sustainable tripartite school partnership model – consisting of course instructors, teachers from partnership schools and our MTeach students – will be developed to provide an authentic learning environment to enhance the metacognitive teaching competence of MTeach students. Under this tripartite school partnership model a collaborative action research study will be conducted to improve the teaching and learning in our university. The main goal of this project is therefore centred around enhancing MTeach students’ metacognitive teaching competencies with a view to tackling the impacts and challenges created by and underlying the Learning to Learn 2.0 curriculum.