Metacognition

Learning how to learn is one of the most important sets of skills and understandings that we can equip our students with no matter their age.

The ability and mindsets to seek and successfully engage in new challenges, to learn from mistakes and grow, and to acquire new skills and knowledge will all be crucial to their success in school and beyond.

One of the most important aspects of being able to lead your own learning is being aware of your thoughts and learning processes, in other words, to actually think about your thinking.

In the world of education, we call this metacognition.

But it's an old idea that harkens back to the ancient philosophers.

The word metacognition was coined only in the 1970s, yet educators have been studying its learning import for decades.

For example, educational philosopher John Dewey said over a century ago, "We do not learn from experience.

"We learn from reflecting on experience." It's in the reflection, the interior dialogues we create, where our most important learning often happens.

Children can be metacognitive at an early age, but they must first develop a self-awareness of their own thinking and how it might differ from other people's.

In addition, effective metacognition requires a knowledge base that very young children often don't have.

This means metacognitive abilities develop over time, and they can be significantly accelerated with proper instruction and practice.

That's where teachers come into play.

Metacognition is often thought of as having two facets.

There's metacognitive knowledge, which is awareness of one's own thinking and approaches to learning.

Then, there's an action component that uses this metacognitive knowledge to control and direct learning.

In this way, students self-regulate their learning, hence the name metacognitive regulation.

This latter set of skills involves planning, time management, and monitoring and evaluating performance quality.

This all falls under the moniker of self-regulated learning, an essential component of teaching students about learning how to learn.

We're going to introduce you to several aspects of metacognition and developing a classroom culture that encourages it.

We'll then provide some useful metacognitive questions students can begin to ask.

Before we begin, we'd like you to recall the learning principles we've been studying throughout this course.

Please take a few minutes to do that.

We need to keep these principles in mind as we think about teaching strategies to help our students become metacognitive learners.

Now, let's begin to examine some ways to develop a classroom culture that supports thinking about thinking.

The most important and perhaps obvious practice is to provide ample opportunities for students to reflect, both in and out of class.

It's a good idea to talk with them about why you're having them reflect in various ways and what you see the benefits to be for their learning.

This habit of reflection goes hand in hand with formative feedback and closing the performance gap, as well as with growth mindset and effective effort.

Recall from our previous sessions about feedback that having students do something with their feedback whenever possible is absolutely essential.

This expectation and practice of ongoing revision after reflection goes a long way in developing a metacognitive culture in your classroom.

A sense of purpose is a powerful motivator for learners, and it helps them see why reflection can help them achieve classroom goals, especially if success criteria and standards are visible to all.

They should know where their going as they learn and why.

Consistently involving students with assessment practices is important too.

Whenever possible, having students self-assess is particularly effective in encouraging metacognition since it requires ongoing reflection to be successful.

This means students are asking question like, "What did I do well? "What do I need to work on?" and "What do I do next?" Finally, a classroom rich in collaboration, with peer-assessment being an essential part of that, will involve students in reflecting on the thinking and work of others, which invariably impacts their own thinking.

The more we infuse our classroom cultures with opportunities for student reflection, the more we cultivate this habit in our students.

We also signal to them that it's an important disposition to value.

Next, I'd like to discuss some questions that students can ask to help create a culture of metacognition.

At the end of the day, metacognition is mostly about asking questions.

It's about creating an interior dialogue or a dialogue with others that makes students' thinking and actions more visible.

This allows them to examine and critique their behaviors.

What follows are a few examples of metacognitive questions that students can ask themselves.

It's important that they practice these enough to eventually have the most important ones internalized to use without being prompted.

The basic intention of all the questions that follow is that they encourage the learner to actively process what they're seeing or hearing, connecting the new information to already existing prior knowledge.

Again, the learning principles we've been studying in this course about active learning, the role of prior knowledge, and thinking to learn will be important to keep in mind as you have students practice.

Let's begin.

Here is some questions to ask before engagement of a topic.

They'll help students determine purpose and also activate prior knowledge.

Why are we studying this? Why is this topic important? What do I already know about this topic? How does this topic relate to what we've previously studied? The next set of questions can be used during the engagement of a topic.

These questions encourage students to actively process what they're encountering, linking it meaningfully to prior knowledge and more fully elaborating its meaning and the reasoning behind it.

How can I connect this with what I already know? What questions do I have? What am I confused about? How does this work? What are the reasons or evidence being provided? Who's point of view if being represented? The following questions are meant to be asked after a topic has been engaged.

They're also intended to have students actively process what they've just learned and identify gaps in their learning.

What were the most important ideas or concepts? What do I need to know more about? How has this changed what I know? How can I use this later? Of course, we can hope to have our students learn to ask all of these questions as a part of their metacognitive development.

So the key question for us to ask is, "Which ones would be most useful for "our students in the context of "our learning goals and classroom environment?" Our overall aim in developing metacognitive knowledge and self-regulation is for our students to become more aware of their strengths and weaknesses.

In this way, we hope to have a lasting impact on their futures as growing and motivated lifelong learners.