Metacognition

How can metacognition be used in schools to enhance the learning of children

and young people?

How can schools improve the metacognitive skills of children in a way that is
helpful across the curriculum?

What is metacognition? Why and how should it be encouraged in schools?

What approaches can schools adopt to support the development of

metacognition in children?

Aims and objectives

 Define and discuss the concept of metacognition
 Illustrate the evidence for effectiveness relating to metacognition in the
school setting
 Examine the psychologist’s role in tapping into metacognition
 To explore metacognitive interventions in the educational environment

Define and discuss the concept of metacognition

Metacognition definition:
 Thinking about one’s own thinking
 The ability to monitor and regulate one’s own thinking processes
 Self-monitoring, self-questioning
 Ongoing active orchestration of variety of different processes
 Planning, preparing, engaging in task and monitoring/evaluating how
well you did those tasks
Metacognitive knowledge
 Accumulated biographical information of one’s own cognitions
Metacognitive belief
 Beliefs about one’s capability to perform a task – crucial in school
settings! May underlie confidence
Metacognitive strategy
 Ongoing control and monitoring of one’s own cognitions
 Self regulation
Relevance to school: successful learners are more likely to use a range of
cognitive skills and strategies (Eyde & Altman, 1978)
 Short et al. (1993) found that more successful learners had a better sense
of what they had done in the past – metacognitive awareness of strategies
that work and how to employ them
 Male (1995) students with moderate learning difficulties can think about
their own thinking, but only when there are very clear authentic
similarities. It’s more accessible when the tasks are authentic real-life
tasks.
Illustrate the evidence for effectiveness relating to metacognition in the
school setting

Evidence of effectiveness: learning

 Metacognition can support generic learning but also more than that!
 Increase metacognitive awareness when teaching process of learning.
Children could reflect on where they were in the learning process
 McGuinness (1999) – taught children on different types of thinking.
Children could then reflect on what they were doing (e.g. critical thinking
in science or creative thinking in geography) – by explicitly giving a name
of the type of thinking they did.

 Children get a better grasp conceptually of a subject area (Chi, 1996),
Pramling (1988) – better prepared for future learning
 Weil (2013) – developmental trajectory of metacognition. Sensitive
period of growth between 12-15. Period where metacognitive abilities are
ripe for development. Seize these opportunities
 Can make a difference to enhancing metacognitive awareness which then
enhances learning
Evidence of effectiveness: literacy
 Children with difficulties in reading/spelling – can develop interventions
which use metacognitive awareness.
 Greenway (2002) – Reciprocal teaching
 Houtveen et al (2007) reported positive results on the effects of strategy
instruction and reading comprehension. Teachers who demonstrated
better metacognitive strategy instruction also produced students who
made better progress in metacognitive knowledge. In a follow-up study,
students who were in their original experimental group had substantially
better results on reading comprehension than those students who were in
the control group. Conclusion was that teachers can teach their students
metacognitive skills and these skills will in turn lead to better results in
reading comprehension
 Ferguson (2011) – metacognitive approach to enhance spelling and
reading
 Corden, 2002 – enhanced written outcomes
 Graham & Mason, 2006 – enhanced written outcomes
 Enhanced written outcomes – SRSD – self-regulatory strategy can be used
in the context of writing. Make them aware of the processes in writing
(e.g. planning, structure) – give scaffolds to improve awareness of what
they are doing
Evidence of effectiveness: numeracy
 Cardelle-Elawar, 1995 – metacognitive instruction scaffolds low achievers
 Carr et al (1994) – Increase in connections between new information and
existing knowledge
 Montague et al., 1993 – embedded metacognitive strategies into
numeracy with a rationale enhanced learning
 Mevarech& Kramarski, 2002 – metacognitive training outperformed
worked out maths examples
  Tok, 2013 – impact of metacognition on maths performance
 Teach strategies that you can apply to different scenarios.
 When you combine metacognitive approaches – outperforms traditional
training techniques
 When you adopt metacognitive approach, can enhance skillsets at generic
and specific levels

Examine the psychologist’s role in tapping into metacognition

Metacognitive measures
 MSK (metacognitive self-knowledge questionnaire) – explores use in
numeracy (Goos, 1999)
 MSI (metacomprehension strategy index) – to examine metacognition in
reading comprehension. Used in upper primary (9-15 yr olds) (Schmitt,
1990)
 Self-talk questionnaire – use of self-talk to indicate self-regulated
behaviours (Lee, McDonough, & Bird, 2014)
 Meta-cognitive knowledge interview (McKI) for younger children aged 3-
5 (Marulis et al., 2016)
 Sperling et al (2012) – compared Junior Metacognitive Awareness
Inventory and Metacognition measure (Swanson, 1990)
 Generic metacognitive measures – junior metacognitive awareness
inventory, metacognition measure. May not be so sensitive to pick up an
effect.

Explore metacognitive interventions in the educational environment

Overview of interventions
 Can think about interventions at child level, group level, and school levels
 Individual approaches:
o Dan & Cameron (1995)
o Rabel & Wooldridge, 2013 – Think aloud protocols
Collaborative small group approaches
 “Think about it” multifaceted intervention with phonemic awareness,
semantic cueing, and metacognitive strategies (Ferguson, Currie, Paul, &
Topping, 2011). Ferguson saw an increase in their reading skills,
comprehension, and spelling. Improved immediately after and 2 years
afterwards
 “Solve it!” cognitive strategy intervention for maths problem solving
(Montague, Krawec, Enders, and Dietz, 2014)
 6 hour metacognitive instruction (Zepeda, Richey, Ronevich, and Noakes-
Malach, 2015)
Individual and group
 Self instructional statements and questions (Harris & Pressley, 1991)
 Think aloud protocols (Rabel & Wooldridge, 2013)
 Reciprocal teaching (Greenway, 2002) Teaches reading
comprehension. Adult teaches children to develop awareness engaging in
clarifying, summarizing, explaining, and predicting. They’ll read a text
 together – summarize what happened, explain/predict, clarify words they
don’t know. Then adults take a step back and the children will conduct the
process themselves.
 Story grammar (Danoff et al., 1993) – 5-step process that uses 7
questions to help children think about the story. Gives a scaffold to help
children think about structure for writing stories
 SRSD to enhance writing – argumentative essay writing. How to write a
persuasive argument.
 “Solve it!” cognitive strategy intervention for maths problem solving
(Montague, Krawec, Enders, and Dietz, 2014)
Whole school approaches
 McGuinness (1999) DfEE Research Report 115
 Higgins et al (2004) EPPI Centre Research
 Salmon (2008) – relevance in Early Years and Education generally
 Interventions that get students to evaluate before, during, and after
through a series of questions. Think aloud protocols do the same thing.
Help children self-regulate.
Whole school approaches
 Shayer & Adhami (2011) created a task that created cognitive
conflict/dissonance but that actually enhanced cognitive development.
 Cognitive acceleration in science education and cognitive acceleration in
maths education. Piagetian approach
 Primary studies – Hu et al., 2011 – because you have one teacher teaching
all studies, you tend to use infusion. McGuiness (1999; 2005) – teach
thinking across the curriculum. Children are aware of their thinking
process whether they are in a drama class or maths class.
 Metacognitive logs – reflect on what kind of thinking they did. What kind
of stages, where else could they use that strategy?
 Peer mentoring – Moralis et al 2016
Challenge for psychologists
 Metacognition – a bridge between cognitive psychology and educational
practice (Kuhn & Dean, 2004)