Supporting pupils to become self-regulated learners is an essential role of all educators. It aids exam success and sets young people up as effective learners for life. These Activate cards are an invaluable resource for developing learner independence and empowering all students with agency to achieve success.

I love Activate! It combines powerful research with practical activities. This is a wonderful set of resources from which anyone facilitating professional learning can draw. The cards simplify, clarify and deepen understanding, building community and confidence in the process as they demystify self-regulation and metacognition.

This resource is a major step towards a psychologically literate education: one that understands what goes on in learners’ minds, what personal beliefs and classroom practices get in the way of their learning, and what smart mind hacks can unleash and augment their learning power. These teaching methods will turn out learners who get better results, but, more than that, they will be better prepared for a long learning life. Exceptionally clearly written and presented, based in robust cognitive science, Activate is really, really, really, really useful and practical. Use the materials, follow what it says on the tin, and a 21st century school worthy of the name can be yours for the asking.

A modern education should cultivate learners who are able to learn on their own – in school and throughout their lives. Yet it’s one thing to espouse the goal of self-directed learning and another to provide the means of achieving this goal. Activate does this by offering a comprehensive approach to teaching and reinforcing the cognitive, metacognitive and dispositional skills needed for independent learning. While its recommended practices are grounded in research, Activate brings theory to life through a comprehensive set of practical tools in the form of strategy cards that serve both teachers and learners. I recommend this resource to educators and parents who seek to develop self-directed learners.

What a wonderful and timely resource this is! Around the world, there is growing interest in, and understanding of, the importance of agency in powering up our young people’s learning. This unique resource makes such an important contribution to global efforts to educate young people in a way that not only enhances their agency at school but builds the capacity to participate successfully in a life of learning beyond school. The cards offer so many possibilities for rich, transformative conversations! This practical resource will help make the sometimes daunting concepts of self-regulation, metacognition and self-efficacy better understood by educators and equip them with some really effective strategies for engaging with students and colleagues alike. I can’t wait to use Activate in my own work in schools.

Here’s a resource which will help teachers think again about their own classroom practice. Cleverly structured, it guides teachers through consideration of how they could refine and transform their approach, in doing so solving some of those long-standing challenges and improving outcomes for pupils … all in dialogue with colleagues. Brilliant professional learning in action!

Here’s a resource which imaginative and committed school and college leaders will grab as a way of improving the quality of what goes on among teachers and pupils in classrooms, departments and more widely. After all, metacognition and self-regulated learning represent the El Dorado of educators – to be able to identify accurately for yourself where you need to improve and have sufficient control of your behaviour and environment to do it would be the ideal outcome for us all – and a huge benefit to a heathy society if it could be done at scale. This resource could help. Every school and college needs a copy, but they will also need leaders who commit to its thoughtful implementation. It’s particularly suited to a multi-academy trust since they will have the resource to enable hands-on coaching, which will be the ideal way of making sure it isn’t one of those many good ideas which founder for lack of commitment from leaders.