Development of learning to learn skills in primary school

In Finland, schools’ effectiveness in fostering the development of transversal skills, which are prerequisites of lifelong learning, is evaluated through large-scale learning to learn (LTL) assessments. This article presents an overview of the development of LTL by showing with longitudinal data of 608 pupils how the cognitive component of LTL in fourth and sixth grade is related to students’ cognitive competence and reading skills in the beginning of first grade and how they together predict pupils’ complex problem solving (CPS) skills at the end of sixth grade. The development of learning-related motivational beliefs and their relation to the cognitive LTL competences and CPS are also studied. The results show that the development of children’s thinking and problem solving skills are not fully determined by earlier individual differences in cognitive competences. Motivational beliefs begin to play a role in explaining cognitive LTL performance gradually from age 10 on, and they have a slightly stronger effect on CPS, which was measured by computer-based tasks. It is concluded that the Finnish learning to learn model is a valid measure for predicting 12-years-olds’ performance in a complex problem solving situation which is expected to be closer to the demands of their future work life.