Cognitive work developed by students: from the importance to the promotion

The task of promoting cognitive work is a school’s most important task. Recent research, carried out in OECD countries, concluded that the differences between developing countries and developed countries in terms of educational policies should no longer be attributed to the number of years of compulsory schooling, but rather to suitable attention paid to the development of cognitive competences. However, learning situations and tasks distributed to the learners are not always sufficiently clear about the cognitive competences that they promote nor do they promote meta-knowledge within their procedures, which literature correlates to higher levels of school effectiveness; Thus, the present study seeks to explore how school subjects such as history and natural sciences develop curricular tasks that promote the development of cognitive competences. Research data come from 43 reports gathered from 43 history or natural science classes. The study concluded that there is a remarkable difference between the values obtained in the dimension of the importance of the studied tasks and the planned occasions for their implementation and evaluation.

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Cognitive work ,

learning tasks ,

curriculum development ,