This article is based on work which is being done collaboratively by the staff of John Mason School, Abingdon and two university lecturers. One consequence of the closeness of this collaboration is that the school staff wished the school to be identified in this article. The work is designed within an action research framework to address the long-term commitment, shared by the lecturers and teachers involved, to the development of teaching approaches which bring about effective learning on the part of all pupils in the school. This article concentrates on two cycles of action research that took place during the first two years of our collaboration. In the first cycle, we sought to improve pupils' learning in two small areas of the curriculum by using teaching based on the principles of mastery learning. In the second, we focused on pupils' learning of key aspects of the curriculum and used mastery learning in an attempt to encourage transfer of this learning from one subject area in school to others. The article describes and discusses the development undertaken in each cycle, teachers' views of the work both in principle and in practice, and pupils' responses to the work teachers did with them. ...
