Metacognitive knowledge - WikEd (original) (raw)

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Metacognition is defined in the Mayer text as “knowledge and awareness of one’s own cognitive processes” (Mayer, 100).

Three basic elements (http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr1metn.htm) of metacognition.

1.) Developing the plan
2.) Implementing and maintaining the plan
3.) Evaluating the plan

Metacognition traces its origins back to Flavell in the early 1970s, replacing the term “metamemory”, also originating from Flavell.

Flavell defined it in 1979 as knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena.

Also defined as knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition (Brown, 1978).

Importance of Metacognition for school success and life success

Metacognition has applications for many arenas of school success. The essence of metacognition is awareness of one's cognitive processes, as well as an ability to develop a plan for achieving a goal and evaluating one's effectiveness of reaching that goal.

In science or mathematics, metacognition looks like planning strategies to use on a word problem or to design an experiment to isolate a given element. Additionally, metacognition means being able to evaluate several different strategies used in order to determine which ones worked, and which ones might be the best to use in a similar situation in the future.

In the humanities, metacognition teaches students to plan essays and modes of research before delving into a large paper or term paper. Metacognition also helps students along the way to remain focused, on task, and ensures the end result will be a clear, concise exposition of a single topic with appropriate details included.

Mayer, in the very beginning of his book, highlights how very ineffective it is to attempt to learn a skill by repetition devoid of feedback. In a class of 30 or more students, one might say it is equally ineffective for students to learn with the only feedback they receive being from the teacher. Given a 60 minutes class period, less than 2 minutes of the class can be devoted to each student, leaving no time for whole group instruction. This is insufficient for great growth. Instead, the beauty of metacognition is that students can learn how to provide some simple feedback to themselves. This means they require less attention from the teacher, and are more capable of independent work. Additionally, they can help other students' evaluate their performance once they have developed a solid set of criteria for a given task or academic domain.

Metacognition is quite possibly one of the most valuable life skills as well as academic skills. Ideally, a new employee may have to be corrected on a procedure once or twice, but after that the boss will hope that s/he will have the awareness to catch and correct that mistake independently. An employee with weak metacognition must continually be corrected externally, which is a source of frustration for employer and employee alike! On a more personal note, most people know someone (or are someone!) who continues to make the same mistake over and over again in his or her personal life, be it in the area of romance, family relationships, or job choice. This person continually makes the same sort of bad choice, each time thinking "This time will be different". In fact, we often say of such a person "will they never learn?" Such a person has weak metacognition, and may indeed have some other circumstance (personal insecurity, uncontrolled anger, etc.) which prevents metacognition from occurring in that particular area of his or her life.

Among teachers, as I believe with any other "people professional", metacognition is vital. One of the more common ways it has been conceptualized of late is via the term "reflective practitioner". This emphasizes the final stage of metacognition, which is evaluating the success of the plan, and then making adequate adjustments. The reflective teacher is one who plans, executes the plan, and then has the skill, desire, and context to be able to evaluate the success of the plan, and to learn where improvements can be made. While this is done hopefully on a macro scale after a lesson or even a unit, small reflections should be ongoing, even on an almost sub-conscious level. As a teacher, I continually read my students' faces to determine their level of interest, attention and comprehension. If I give an example I thought would be very relevant and it results in great confusion, I may try to re-explain the example, supplement it with a different analogy, or allow one of the students to share an example from their own experience that might make more sense to the class. If they appear bored or tired, I will alter my instruction to compensate. Much of this occurs on a non-verbal level, although students' comments (especially with older children) help in this process. Teaching without the benefit of such cues is much more difficult, and most teachers learn this delicate art with their students.

Ways of fostering metacognition

Conflict Resolution has been proposed as one vehicle of fostering metacognition (Heydenberk & Heydenberk, 2005). They proposed that a comprehensive program entailing instruction related to conflict resolution as well as other social skills significant assists in students' ability and inclination towards metacognition, in and outside of academic subjects. It is important to note the distinction they made between ongoing intensive training in conflict resolution skills (and accompanying practice) and a brief, superficial exposure to conflict resolution principles (especially without adequate opportunity to practice these principles). There was no sign of an increase in metacognition in any significant way unless instruction in conflict resolution was in-depth and it remained a focus of the class, both in regards to content and relationally.

Kramarski (2004) incorporated metacognition into mathematics instruction (specifically graph interpretation). Metacognitive questions such as what do the x and y axis represent, what is the trend of the graph, how do you know? were standardized throughout instruction on graphs. The teacher always had students address these question whenever students were discussing the graphs, and students had the questions printed in their booklets as well. This was coupled with group work, but the metacognitive instruction was the variable factor, as all students used group work and were instructed in group work. The result was much higher achievement for the students with metacognitive training on an assessment measuring graph interpretation. This study highlights an important point: metacognition looks different in different contexts. The critical factor is to help students learn to think about what they are doing, believing, and thinking, and why they are doing, believing, and thinking those things.

Kymes (2005) produced an interesting study related to the unique challenges, and need for metacognition, when it comes to online research. Students were taught to use "think alouds", a process in which they verbalize their thoughts surrounding several questions designed to keep them focused and evaluating the usefulness and applicability of portions of their research. These questions were scripted and provided for the students, but this is a unique application derived from the similar process used in reading and writing education, among other areas.

Evidence of effectiveness

Veenman (2004) conducted a study examining the ways in which metacognition correlates with intelligence, as well as the effects that time pressures have on learning of texts and found several interesting things. First, there seems to be an element of metacognition that is not domain specific. While the specific questions may be different in different disciplines, there are self-maintenance questions (why do I think that? what should I do next? why was that conclusion drawn? etc.) which apply to any intellectual task. This is the advantage that metacognitively advanced learners have; they are able to use learned skills to guide their future learning, thereby greatly reducing the amount of time and effort required to learn skills in the new domain.

Secondly, Veenman, whose study compared the comprehension of reading a difficult economics and a simple geography essay under differing time constraints, found that metacognition works most strongly in a challenging problem. When students' reading level is not challenged, there is little need for the extra assistance of strong metacognitive cues. But when challenged, metacognition is allowed to take over and lead the intellectual processes that are occurring.

Perhaps most interestingly, Veenman's attempts to correlate intelligence (as found be a battery of ability tests) with metacognition yielded the result that intelligent people usually have high metacognition, but some metacognitively advanced students do not score as having high intelligence. While there is a strong correlation between the two, it is far from predictive.

Challenges for metacognition

A study conducted by DuBois et al (2004) actually found a negative correlation between SAT math scores and metacognition. This may be in part due to a small sample size, and the traditional mathematics pedagogical methods of rote memorization which leaves little room or advantage for metacognition. Additionally, the questionable correlation between metacognition and achievement may be attributable to developing metacognitive abilities, which are not yet fully mature or reliably applied. But the ways in which metacognition impacts achievement seems to not yet be completely understood.

Another, significant challenge to the concept of metacognition has been questions regarding young children’s abilities to analyze their own thinking skills. However, such critiques seem to have been successfully answered with the call for cognitively appropriate metacognitive exercises. While primary students should not be asked to complete the same metacognitive tasks as secondary students, all students are capable of some type of metacognition. Flavell, 1987: 26, Haywood 1997, Lipman 1982, 1985..

Self-regulation has a motivational component as well as a metacognitive one. e.g. Students must not only know how to self-regulate, but they must also choose to do so because the task at hand holds sufficient motivation. This explains some research that shows a loose or absent correlation between metacognitive abilities and self-regulation (implementation of said skills).

Alternative explanations due to Diversity considerations

Metacognitive competency, defined by Wang (1992) as the ability to reflect and exhibit self-regulation over one's thinking, was found to be one of the prime differences between low-achieving, at-risk students and stronger achievers. Enabling students to develop metacognition, while helpful for all students, may be especially critical for students who are traditionally underserved by schools. Metacognition may be as close to "the magic bullet" as there is when it comes to explanation of why some students and some groups of students seem to perform better than others. It is a non-elitist explanation, dodging the dangerous territory of the cultural deficit model to provide a possible answer, and, even better, a possible solution to educators and those who study education.

Signed ”life experiences”, testimonies and stories

Brown, A.L. (1978). Knowing when, where, and how to remember: A problem of metacognition. Advances in Instructional Psychology, 1, 77-165.

DuBois, N., Howard, B.C., Sperling, R.A., & Staley, R. (2004). Metacognition and self-regulated learning constructs. Educational Research and Evaluation, 10(2), 117-13.

Flavell, J.H. (1971). First discussant’s comments: What is memory development the development of? Human Development, 14, 272-278.

Flavell, J.H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: a new area of cognitive developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34, 906-911.

Flavell, J.H. (1987). Speculations about the nature and development of metacognition. In F.E. Weinert and R.H. Kluwe (Eds) Metacognition, Motivation, and Understanding (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum), 21-29.

Heydenberk, Roberta Anna & Heydenberk, Warren R. (2005).Increasing Meta-Cognitive Competence through Conflict Resolution Education and Urban Society. v37 n4 p431-452.

Kramarski, B. (2004). Making Sense of Graphs: Does Metacognitive Instruction Make a Difference on Students' Mathematical Conceptions and Alternative Conceptions? 27 p. Learning and Instruction. v14 n6 p593-619.

Kymes, Angel. (2005). Teaching Online Comprehension Strategies Using Think-Alouds. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. v48 n6 p492-500.

Lipman, M. (1985). Thinking skills fostered by philosophy for children. In J. Segal, S. Chipman, and R. Glaser (Eds) Thinking and Learning Skills 1 (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum), 83-108.

Mayer, R. (2003). Learning and Instruction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Swanson, H.L. (1990). Influence of metacognitive knowledge and aptitude on problem solving. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(2), 306 – 314.

Veenman, Marcel V J. Beishuizen, Jos J. Intellectual and Metacognitive Skills of Novices while Studying Texts under Conditions of Text Difficulty and Time Constraint 20 p. Learning and Instruction. v14 n6 p621-640 Dec 2004.

Wang, M. C. (1992). Adaptive education strategies: Building on diversity. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.