Increasingly, undergraduate students in England appear to have learned to learn passively, and are less able to think inquiringly and knowledgeably for themselves.   Expecting to be led and told, more than to construct meaning or develop themselves as learners, many find it hard to become intrinsically motivated and independently minded scholars in an academic field or autonomous professionals in a vocational area.  In response to this challenge, an innovative curriculum approach with distinctive ways of teaching, learning, formative and summative assessment has been devised.  It is called Inquiry Into Learning(IIL).  The question for IIL tutors’ research is: Could students’ action research into the improvement of their practice as learners enable them to learn how to learn in higher education? 

For this purpose, learning is conceived neither as a subject to be taught, nor as a set of skills and competences to be trained, but, following Paul Hirst (1983), as a social practice. The design of the approach uses the theoretical framework of curriculum planning and research processes of Lawrence Stenhouse (1975).  Richard Winter’s (2003) concept of Patchwork Texts is used to organise formative and summative assessment methods which are coherent with sociocultural theories of learning.  The kind of student’s knowing which is valued most, following Stephen Rowland (1999), is in a dynamic relationship between public and personal knowledge in the experience of communicating together about practice, which we call discussional knowing.  The IIL pedagogy is informed by the value systems and conceptual insights developed by Ferre Laevers in Belgium (1998) and the Reggio Emilia approach in Italy (Edwards, C. Gandini and Foreman, 1998 and Rinaldi, C. 2006)

Following John Dewey (1916) the IIL approach requires each student to take her/his current, direct experiences of learning and a personal self evaluation of her/himself as a learner as the starting point.  The aim is to prioritise and deepen practical knowledge (Hirst, P. 1983:197) of learning.   Each inquiry gathers evidence of existing practices in comparison with desired improvements, and draws on practical suggestions and theoretical frames, using action research methods to test improvements in action.  There are repeated cycles of student-led learning inquiries feeding into regular, whole group ‘conferences’ at which individual and small group gains are presented, discussed and evaluated.  The cohort functions as a community of practice (Wenger, E. 1998).  Improvements are sought in how to learn, in oneself as a learner and in how to inquire productively into improving one’s own and each others’ learning.  Incremental development over a series, normally five, learning inquiries, functions as an apprenticeship in learning (Rogoff, B. 1991).  Students’ written accounts of their learning inquiries, or ‘patches’ are shared online.  Both the processes and products of the inquiry work are the focus of regular peer feedback and formative assessment.  Each student’s cumulative set of patches, plus integrative reflections on peer feedback and theoretical reading, are drawn upon to produce a composite, reflective ‘patchwork text’ assignment entitled Becoming a reflective learner. 

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