Providing opportunities for active learning: assessing incidence and impact

An active learning methodology has been advanced by a number of people as a means of promoting more meaningful and effective learning and has underpinned initiatives in schools such as TVEI. However, while there is an extensive literature concerning principles and pedagogy, there have been few attempts to assess the incidence of the provision of active learning opportunities or, indeed, to assess whether such learning has been effected. Two major attempts are reviewed prior to the presentation and discussion of new data which were gathered utilizing newly developed sets of indicators of the provision of active learning opportunities and of active learning itself. The article concludes with a discussion of the constraints on such provision and of the reasons why a renewed focus on active learning might be imminent.