Metacognition (original) (raw)
Conceptualizing and assessing metacognitive development in young children
2014
Historically, early cognitive skills have been underestimated, largely as a function of the ways these competencies have been measured, which is particularly pervasive in the area of metacognition. Only recently have researchers begun to detect evidence of metacognition in preschool-aged children through the use of observational assessment tools (e.g., Whitebread et al., 2007, 2009). While these observational methods are a more sensitive way to capture metacognition in young children, their exclusive use may not result in a comprehensive depiction of early metacognitive competency. In this study, we describe the development of a metacognitive knowledge interview (McKI) and what it reveals about metacognitive processes in preschool-aged children. The McKI was tested for feasibility and sensitivity with 42 preschoolers. Findings indicate that the McKI is (a) a developmentally appropriate sensitive measure for 3-5 year olds, (b) capable of eliciting articulated metacognition when engag...
METACOGNITION AND YOUNG CHILDREN'S THEORY OF MIND: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
Metacognition" essentially means cognition about cognition; that is, it refers to second order cognitions: thoughts about thoughts, knowledge about knowledge or reflections about actions. Flavell (1981) distinguishes between metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experience. A number of metacognitive strategies are described aiming to help teachers to develop independent learners who can control their own learning and learn how to learn for life. Children's 'Theory of Mind' ( TOM ) is the "understanding children have of their own and others' minds and of the relation between the mind and the world, which enables them to predict and explain actions by ascribing mental states, such as beliefs, desires and intentions to themselves an to other people" ( Astington, 1991). This review attempts to facilitate our understanding of how young children think and how they behave on the basis of this thinking. The link between 'Metacognition' and 'Theory of Mind' follows then, with a discussion on the similarities and differences between Metacognition and Theory of Mind as well as the convergences of the two research areas. Key Words: 'Theory of Mind', 'Metacognition' 2 METACOGNITION AND YOUNG CHILDREN'S THEORY OF MIND METACOGNITION: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Psychology in general and developmental psychology in particular, are presently awash in a "meta" flood (metacognition, metamemory, metaperception, metalanguage, and so on). It seems that these constructs reflect a relatively new, stimulating and very attractive research perspective as suggested by a number of review articles (Brown, 1987, During the last 40 years metacognition has become one of the major fields of cognitive developmental research. Research activity in metacognition began with John Flavell, who is considered to be the "father of the field" and thereafter a considerable amount of empirical and theoretical research dealing with metacognition can be registered. Moreover, a number of strategies aiming to enhance children's metacognitive abilities have been suggested, which teachers through all educational levels can apply in their instruction. Such strategies are set out in the relevant section dealing with the development of Metacognition in practice (see p.16) and contribute to both the promotion of critical thinking in education and staff development. 3 METACOGNITION AND YOUNG CHILDREN'S THEORY OF MIND
2015
The paradigm shift from the teacher centered to the learner centered approach hassubjected the learners to be independent of their study. Metacognitive abilities enhance self-instruction, self-awareness about one’s knowledge andstrategies to solve real life problems. This study monitors metacognitiveabilities in children of ages 5-7 years and 8-11 years. The study also investigates how metacognitiondevelops during childhood and what could be the possible causes of theacquisition of these metacognitive skills? Is it maturation or environment orboth and how can it be enhanced? A qualitative method was used and the approachwas strictly naturalistic. Two groups from Government Bilingual Primary SchoolMuea, Buea were selected through purposive sampling; 43 participants from classtwo (N=43) and 65 participants from class four (N=65), a metacognitive observationtool was designed based on Flavell’s model of cognitive monitoring. Aninterview was conducted with the teachers of classes two an...
Metacognition: A Literature Review Research Report
2011
Metacognition is defined most simply as “thinking about thinking.” Metacognition consists of two components: knowledge and regulation. Metacognitive knowledge includes knowledge about oneself as a learner and the factors that might impact performance, knowledge about strategies, and knowledge about when and why to use strategies. Metacognitive regulation is the monitoring of one’s cognition and includes planning activities, awareness of comprehension and task performance, and evaluation of the efficacy of monitoring processes and strategies. Recent research suggests that young children are capable of rudimentary forms of metacognitive thought, particularly after the age of 3. Although individual developmental models vary, most postulate massive improvements in metacognition during the first 6 years of life. Metacognition also improves with appropriate instruction, with empirical evidence supporting the notion that students can be taught to reflect on their own thinking. Assessment o...
Metacognitive Development in Early Childhood: New Questions about Old Assumptions
Trends and Prospects in Metacognition Research, 2010
Age-related improvements in children's ability to monitor and regulate their mental operations are widely recognized to be a driving force in cognitive development, underlying age-related improvements in accuracy on a wide variety of tasks. Thus, a major focus of metacognitive research is the development of these skills during childhood. This work has primarily focused on achievements in middle childhood, largely because prevailing views hold that young children have extremely limited abilities in this domain. However, there is good evidence to suggest that young children may be more metacognitively skilled than previously assumed. This chapter reviews previous research, as well as recent findings from naturalistic and experimental studies to argue that critical milestones in metacognition are achieved in early childhood, providing the foundation for learning in a host of domains and subsequent metacognitive development.
Historically, early cognitive skills have been underestimated, largely as a result of the ways these competencies have been measured, which is particularly pervasive in the area of metacognition. Only recently have researchers begun to detect evidence of contextualized metacognition in 3–5 year old preschool children through the use of observational assessment tools (e.g., Whitebread et al. J Cogn Educ Psychol 3:433-455, 2007, Metacognition Learn 4:63-85, 2009). While these observational methods are a more sensitive way to capture metacognition in young children, their exclusive use may not result in a comprehensive depiction of early metacognitive competency. In the current study, we
Development of metacognitive skillfulness: A longitudinal study
Learning and Individual Differences, 2010
This study shows the results of a two-year longitudinal study where the same participants were followed for two consecutive years as they enter secondary school (aged 12-14 years). The main issue was to investigate the development of both the quantity and the quality of metacognitive skills. Another issue was to establish whether the development of metacognitive skillfulness is intelligence-related or relatively intelligenceindependent. Finally, the generality vs. domain-specificity of developing metacognitive skillfulness was investigated. Thirty-two secondary school students participated in this study. While thinking aloud they performed two different tasks representing two different domains: A text-studying task for history and a problem-solving task for math. Participants' intellectual ability, metacognitive skillfulness and learning performance were assessed. Results show a quantitative as well as a qualitative growth in metacognitive skillfulness. Furthermore, results of both years show that metacognitive skillfulness contributed to learning performance (partly) independent of intellectual ability. A parallel development of metacognitive and intellectual ability was found. Finally, metacognitive skills predominantly appear to be general. Domainspecific metacognitive skills, however, played a substantial, but minor role as well in both years. Instructional implications are being discussed.
Early Development of Metacognition
Metacognition traditionally has been conceptualized as a form of higher-order thought that requires metarepresentation, logical reasoning, self-consciousness, and introspective access to knowledge states. Thinking of metacognition along these lines precludes metacognition in nonhuman animals, preverbal human infants, and subjects with certain cognitive and neurophysiological impairments. Recent experimental evidence of implicit metacognitive skills in nonhuman primates, human infants, and human adults show the need for a broad concept of metacognition, based in what metacognition does, i.e., its operative function, instead of theoretical hypotheses about what it is, i.e., its nature. Such a concept would permit unbiased cross-disciplinary investigations of the evolution and development of metacognition. Presenting a new theoretical and conceptual framework for investigating implicit and perceptual forms of metacognition, the article explores the claim that metacognition has its developmental origin in primary intersubjectivity. The claim has implications for research on metacognition in comparative psychology, cognitive science, and related disciplines. It is argued that basic metacognitive skills start to develop from 2 months of age in episodes of turn-taking between infant and caregiver. Infants initially acquire the means for joint monitoring and control of the interaction with the caregiver. Later metacognitive development is a function of the quality and quantity of the stimulation during this period. Turn-taking is apt for scaffolding metacognitive growth because, first, monitoring and control of cognition is integral to it, second, it enables learning and training of epistemic actions that realize monitoring and control functions, and third, feedback is immediate.
Metacognition is one of the buzz words in educational psychology, but it is not always clear what is meant by metacognition. Metacognition refers to higher order thinking that involves active control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning. 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 apply their cognitive resources through metacognitive control. The term "metacognition" is most often associated with John Flavell (1979), who proposed that metacognition consists of both metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experiences or regulation. Flavell further divides metacognitive knowledge into knowledge of person variables, task variables, and strategy variables. Most definitions of metacognition include both knowledge and strategy components. Most individuals of normal intelligence engage in metacognitive regulation when confronted with an ...
3. Assessing Metacognition in Children and Adults
2000
It has been about 25 years now since researchers first became interested in the study of metacognition, with the onset of interest marked by the publication of the 1975 metamemory interview study of Kreutzer, Leonard, and Flavell and the seminal theoretical work of John Flavell (1976) and Ann Brown (1978). The early work by developmental psychologists on age-related differences in children's metacognition captured the attention of researchers concerned with individual differences in academic achievement in children as well as adults. Within academic domains, most of the research has been focused on reading and studying (Baker
The concept and instruction of metacognition
Teacher Development, 2003
Metacognition essentially means cognition about cognition. It refers to both people's awareness and control, not only of their cognitive processes, but of their emotions and motivations as well. A number of strategies are described that teachers can use to facilitate children's metacognitive development and promote the monitoring and regulation of their own cognitive enterprises. The educational benefits of the application of metacognitive strategies such as self-awareness and self-monitoring include the development of independent learners who control their own learning and learn how to learn for life.
… Guadalajara, available at: www. readingmatrix. com …, 2003
defines metacognition as "the ability to think about your thinking-to make your thinking visible". Research shows that students that have this ability to think about their thinking are more effective than students that don't.
Metacognitive Strategies: Asset to Efficient Learning and Education
Slavonic Pedagogical Studies Journal, 2015
The following text deals with the metacognitive strategies. All authors introduce readers into the metacognition terminology and knowledge and describe in detail contemporary trends in the field of metacognitive strategy research. Authors acquaint the reader to the current findings of empirical researches and also they point out the importance of the elementary implementation of metacognitive activities into the educational process. Key words metacognition, metacognitive strategies, comprehension strategies, problem solving strategies many experts in the field of education the key to a new dimension of a student's potential which needs to be examined in detail. So far we have discovered very little about the process of how individuals go from the rather passive and unintended usage of strategies, to active and towards-the-goal-aimed usage which can be more frequently observed among older and more experienced students and especially adults. (Waters-Schneider, 2009). The proper use of metacognition shows undeniable trend towards understanding and describing suspected and unsuspected possibilities in education. Metacognition Metacognition is usually described as thought process of thinking (Lai, 2011), or as the knowledge of control over the inner cognitive activities during the learning process, therefore we are more likely to gain and use already known knowledge of the cognitive processes themselves and their predispositions, plus their ability to alter, improve and develop these processes and predispositions (Helus-Pavelkova, 1992). Cognition can be therefore defined as a complex of psychological processes of information elaborationthis way we can (in the relation to metacognition) characterize metacognition as an "object" which is administrated by metacognitive processes on its specific level. A point of view where metacognition and cognition can be differentiated is described by J. Garofalo and F. Lester (1985): "it's necessary to perceive cognition as a process that is connected to the performance process, unlike metacognition which administrates the selection and planning of such things, which are needed to be done and then, it monitors what is progress right now" (1985: 164). However, it is very hard to exactly differ these two terms from each other. Some authors referred to this construct as to a e.g.: reflexive abstraction (Piaget-Wedgwood-Blanchet, 1976), or to a reflexive intelligence (Skemp, 1979). The concept of metacognition was first used by developmental psychologists and it is today well discussed and applied in the field of clinical psychology, experimental psychology, cognitive neurosciences and mainly by educational psychology. J. Flavell (1979), who is said to be the author of the original term "metacognition", divided metacognition into two elementary components: cognitive knowledge and cognitive regulation/monitoring. The knowledge of cognition contains quite ordered set of knowledge about our own-self (personal) characteristics (strong and weak features of cognition), knowledge of strategies and required tasks (assignment characteristics and the requirements of the assignment/task situation based on the analogy of previous experience). This cognition also contains the knowledge of "know how to do things", when to do them and when is the best time and conditions to apply individual strategy. G. Schrawa's, K. J. Crippen's and K. Hetley's (2006) division is the most commonly used nowadays. They divide this subcomponent of metacognition into declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and conditional knowledge. Metacognition is a multidimensional construct, which is related to important concepts such as motivation (
Thinking about thinking: developing metacognition in children
Early Child Development and Care, 1998
This article explores what metacognition is, why it is important and how it develops in children. It argues that teachers need to help children develop metacognitive awareness, and identifies the factors which enhance metacognitive development. Metacognitive thinking is a key element in the transfer of learning. The child's development of metacognitive skills is defined as meta-learning. Meta-teaching strategies can help mediate the metacognitive skills of children, help to stimilate children's metacognitive thinking. The article draws upon reserch currently being undertaken in London schools on raising achievement in thinking and learning through developing the metacognition of children as learners in schools.
Metacognition: Knowing about knowing, 1994
Why should researchers of cognition investigate metacognition? This chapter constitutes one answer to that question. Metacognition is simultaneously a topic of interest in its own right and a bridge between areas, e.g., between decisiorl making and Inemory, between learning and motivation, and between learning and cognitive development. Although the focus of this chapter is on the metacognitive aspects of learning and memory-which throughout the chapter will be called metammory-both the overall approach and many of the points apply as well to other aspects of cognition. Emphasis is placed on some shortcomings in previous research on memory that have been commented on by several prominent investigators. It is to those investigators' credit that they stepped back from their specific investigations to take stock of the overall progress in the field and to highlight problems. We believe those problems can be solved, with research on metacognition playing a major role in that solution. Previous Research In a well-known book, Kuhn (1962) wrote that science proceeds by alternating between periods of "normal science" (during which investigators do research within a commor~ly accepted paradigm) ar~d "crises" (during which investigators seek a new paradigm due to problems with the old one). This account of science has been attacked strongly (e-g., Shapere, 1971; Suppe, 1977), but it may never
In the last decades, students increasingly have been placed in the role of active learners with responsibilities for their own learning. Students have to be able to plan their learning activities and execute them in a systematic and orderly way and to monitor and to evaluate their learning and to reflect on it. All aforementioned skills are components of metacognitive skillfulness. The first objective was to gain insight in the development of both quantity and quality of metacognitive skills in young adolescents (aged 12-15 years). The second objective was to establish whether development of metacognitive skills is intelligence related or relatively intelligence independent. Finally, the generality vs. domain specificity of developing metacognitive skills was investigated. In a 3-year longitudinal study, participants performed two different tasks (text studying and problem solving) in two different domains (history and math), while thinking aloud. Results show that between the age of 12 and 15 years, metacognitive skills do not develop linearly or at the same pace. Furthermore, metacognitive skills contribute to learning performance, partly independent of intellectual ability. Finally, the results show that metacognitive skills appear to be predominantly general by nature over the years. Although a smaller domain-specific component was found as well in the first 2 years, this component disintegrated in the third year. The age around 15 years appears to be a relevant point in time during the developmental trajectory of metacognitive skills: Growth is (temporarily) put on hold, while the nature of these skills becomes fully general.
The assessment of metacognition in children aged 4-16 years: a systematic review
Review of Education, 2016
This article presents the results of a systematic review of methods that have been used to measure or assess metacognition in children aged 4-16 years over a 20-year period (1992-2012). It includes an overview of the types of tool and methods used linked with the ages of the participants targeted and how metacognition and associated concepts are defined. 2721 records were identified through systematic searching; 525 articles or reports were full text screened, resulting in 149 included studies reporting 84 distinct tools or methods. Of these four were excluded from further analysis after appraisal for reliability, validity and replicability. The final number of methods and tools for metacognitive assessment included in the analysis is 80. The key findings of this review include: • Self-report measures (including questionnaires, surveys and tests) comprise 61% of the included tools. • Observational methods that do not rely on prompting to 'think aloud' (Think Aloud Protocols) have only been used with students aged 9 years and under; • Information about reliability and validity is not always given or given accurately for different tools and methods; • The definition of metacognition in a particular study relates directly to its assessment and therefore its outcomes: this can be misaligned.