Metacognition – Getting Better at Learning by Understanding How We Think

Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think. – Albert Einstein.

Education is no longer just about teaching children the 3 R’s and a handful of random subjects. Aside from academic learning, we are also striving to develop the whole child so that our children:

have critical thinking skills to sort the facts from the fallacies in this age of information so they know how to think rather than what to think
have an all-rounded development with exposure to sports, music, arts and drama
are not only academically intelligent but also emotionally intelligent
are gritty, mentally tough, resilient and persistent
have growth mindsets as opposed to a fixed mindset
are highly creative

In addition to these, we can also help them to become better learners by:

Recently, our school had a talk to the parents about something else that will help our children become better learners – it’s called “metacognition”…

What is Metacognition?

An awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes – cognitive, emotional and motivational. It refers to higher order thinking that actively controls the cognitive processes engaged in learning.

Metacognition is learning in progress…

Thinking about thinking – monitoring our own thinking.
Knowing about knowing – being aware of what you know.
Cognitive self-management – planning, decision making, identifying problems and setting goals.
Emotional self-management – knowing how to control our own emotions, how to show empathy, etc.
Self evaluation – evaluating our own performance.

Why do we want children to develop metacognition?

Activities such as planning how to approach a given learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress toward the completion of a task are metacognitive in nature. Because metacognition plays a critical role in successful learning, it is important to study metacognitive activity and development to determine how students can be taught to better apply their cognitive resources through metacognitive control. – Jennifer Livingston

Metacognitive skills helps children improve their learning – they can guide, regulate and evaluate their own learning. If they can identify the problem, what they know and what they don’t understand, they can actively direct their own learning. They can seek out new challenges for the work they find easy, and get help for the work they’re struggling with. Metacognition helps them assess the problem, select appropriate strategies to deal with the problem and decide how they will handle the problem.

Individuals who demonstrate a wide variety of metacognitive skills perform better on exams and complete work more efficiently – they use the right tool for the job, and they modify learning strategies as needed, identifying blocks to learning and changing tools or strategies to ensure goal attainment. – TEAL

How can we help children develop metacognition?

Have you ever noticed a child struggling in a corner over a problem and wondered why he didn’t ask for help when he was clearly out of his depth? Or why he keeps repeating the same methods for solving the problem when they clearly aren’t working for him? He may be so overwhelmed by the problem that he has tunnel-vision and he can no longer think of alternative solutions.

The Looking for Learning Toolkit

Students with the ability to recognise where they are at on the learning spectrum can take the appropriate measures to further their learning. While this might seem logical to us, it isn’t always the case for students lacking metacognitive skills.

New Learning – this is something new for me.
Consolidated Learning – this is strengthening and clarifying my previous learning.
Treading Water – This is something I already know.
Drowning – I’m struggling with this and need clarification.

Eleonora Louca provides the following strategies and ideas…

Instructional strategies that help develop metacognitive abilities:

encourage children to ‘think aloud’;
focus attention on understanding the way they think and the problems they have to solve;
ask not only for the results, but also for the procedure of thought and the strategy followed;
teach strategies for overcoming difficulties;
place each subject among its relevant ones and find connections among them;
encourage the children to generate questions before, during and after the elaboration of a subject;
help the children to perceive entities, connections, relations, similarities and differences;
enable the children to become aware of the criteria for assessment.

Encourage students to be conscious of their thought process and to develop introspection:

identify what they know and what they don’t know
plan and organise their own strategies
generate their own questions about the work they are involved in
choose consciously by exploring the consequences of their choices and decisions, prior to the decision, during the act of deciding and after the decision
set and pursue their own goals
evaluate their way of thinking and acting
identify the difficulty
paraphrase and elaborate on their ideas
label their behaviours
debrief the thinking process at the end of the learning experience
offer problem solving and research activities
role playing, drama and “putting oneself into another’s shoes” helps students see things from a different perspective
encourage thinking aloud
provide interactive multimedia learning environments
keep a thinking journal
invite the children to teach other children through cooperative learning
modelling the behaviours

TEAL also offers some very specific examples of how metacognitive strategies can be taught to students…

Encourage students to become more strategic thinkers by helping them focus on the ways they process information.
Self-questioning, reflective journal writing, and discussing their thought processes with other learners are just a few ways to encourage learners to examine and develop their metacognitive processes.

Fogarty (1994) – Metacognition is a process that spans three distinct phases. To be successful thinkers, students must:

Develop a plan before approaching a learning task, such as reading for comprehension or solving a math problem.
Monitor their understanding; use “fix-up” strategies when meaning breaks down.
Evaluate their thinking after completing the task.

Encourage students to ask questions, for instance:

During the planning phase, students can ask, What am I supposed to learn? What prior knowledge will help me with this task? What should I do first? What should I look for in this reading? How much time do I have to complete this? In what direction do I want my thinking to take me?
During the monitoring phase, students can ask, How am I doing? Am I on the right track? How should I proceed? What information is important to remember? Should I move in a different direction? Should I adjust the pace because of the difficulty? What can I do if I do not understand?
During the evaluation phase, students can ask, How well did I do? What did I learn? Did I get the results I expected? What could I have done differently? Can I apply this way of thinking to other problems or situations? Is there anything I don’t understand—any gaps in my knowledge? Do I need to go back through the task to fill in any gaps in understanding? How might I apply this line of thinking to other problems?

We can also use specific subjects as opportunities for students to reflect on their learning processes, for example:

Reading: Teach students how to ask questions during reading and model “think-alouds.” Ask them questions during read-alouds and teach them to monitor their reading by constantly asking themselves if they understand what the text is about. Teach them to take notes or highlight important details, asking themselves, “Why is this a key phrase to highlight?” and “Why am I not highlighting this?”
Writing: Model prewriting strategies for organizing thoughts, such as brainstorming ideas using a word web, or using a graphic organizer to put ideas into paragraphs, with the main idea at the top and the supporting details below it.
Social Studies and Science: Teach students the importance of using organizers such as KWL charts, Venn diagrams, concept maps , and anticipation/reaction charts to sort information and help them learn and understand content. Students can use organizers prior to a task to focus their attention on what they already know and identify what they want to learn. They can use a Venn diagram to identify similarities and differences between two related concepts.
Math: Teach students to use mnemonics to recall steps in a process, such as the order of mathematical operations. Model your thought processes in solving problems—for example, “This is a lot of information; where should I start? Now that I know____, is there something else I know?”

See also:

About the author

Dr Shen-Li Lee is a freelance writer and mum to two boys who have been the inspiration for her ongoing study in child development and education. She searches for the balance in child development methods and educational philosophies that will encourage the nurture of happy, confident and successful children. She shares her views and findings at Figur8.