Teachers’ Knowledge of Students’ Learning Strategies: Recommendations and Evaluations

The objective of this research was to identify which learning strategies pre and in-service teachers (N = 340) recommend to students in two hypothetical learning situations, in order to examine how teachers evaluate students’ learning strategies, and to study relations between recommendations and evaluations. Among the recommended and evaluated learning strategies, four tapped deep learning, and two tapped surface learning. Results showed that teachers mainly recommended either deep-learning strategies or a combination of deep and surface-learning strategies. Teachers gave better evaluations of deep-learning strategies compared to surface-learning strategies. Differences in evaluations of surface-learning strategies and interleaving were found between teachers who recommended only deep-learning strategies and those who recommended both types of strategies.