Information Technology (IT) high school learners are constantly struggling to cope with the challenges of succeeding in the subject. IT teachers, therefore, need to be empowered to utilize appropriate teaching-learning strategies to improve IT learners' success in the subject. By promoting critical thinking skills, IT learners have the opportunity to achieve greater success in the most difficult part of the curriculum, which is programming. Participating IT teachers received onceoff face-to-face professional development where some teachers received professional development in critical thinking strategies while other IT teachers received professional development in critical thinking strategies infused into pair programming. To determine how teachers experience these suggested strategies, teachers participated in initial interviews as well as follow-up interviews after they had implemented the suggested strategies. From the interviews, it became evident that teachers felt that their learners benefited from the strategies. Teachers in the pair programming infusing critical thinking strategies focused more on the pair programming implementation than on the totality of pair programming infused with critical thinking. Although teachers were initially willing to change their ways, they were not always willing to implement new teaching-learning strategies.

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Peer review declarationThe publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African 'National Scholarly Book Publishers Forum Best Practice for Peer Review of Scholarly Books'. The manuscript was subjected to rigorous two-step peer review prior to publication, with the identities of the reviewers not revealed to the author(s). The reviewers were independent of the publisher and/or authors in question. The reviewers commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended that the manuscript be published. Where the reviewers recommended revision and/or improvements to the manuscript, the authors responded adequately to such recommendations. Research JustificationThis scholarly book is the third volume in an NWU book series on self-directed learning. It is devoted to self-directed learning research and its impact on educational practice. The importance of self-directed learning for learners in the 21st century to equip themselves with the necessary skills to take responsibility for their own learning for life cannot be over emphasised. The target audience does not only consist of scholars in the field of self-directed learning in Higher Education and the Schooling sector, but it also includes all scholars in the field of teaching and learning in the various education and training sectors. The book contributes to the discourse on creating dispositions towards self-directed learning among all learners and adds to the latest body of scholarship in terms of self-directed learning. Although from different perspectives, chapters in the book are closely linked together around selfdirected learning as central theme, following on the work done in Volume 1 of this series (Self-Directed Learning for the 21st Century: Implications for Higher Education), to form a rich knowledge bank of work on self-directed learning. This book serves as a valuable contribution to the body of scholarship in self-directed learning.In accordance with the requirements of the Department of Higher Education and Training, this book contains original content not published before and no part of the work was plagiarised.

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