Metacognition

“Metacog­ni­tion is, sim­ply put, think­ing about one’s think­ing” (Chick, 2013) and is a core com­pe­ten­cy that all stu­dents should acquire to assist them with under­stand­ing how they learn, what is work­ing, and what may need to change.

When stu­dents demon­strate poor metacog­ni­tion, they are unaware of their strengths and chal­lenges in learn­ing and have lim­it­ed knowl­edge or abil­i­ty to know how to improve in this area. Alter­nate­ly, those stu­dents who demon­strate good metacog­ni­tion are aware of their chal­lenges in learn­ing but the dif­fer­ence here is that they know what they need to do to improve. This self-aware­ness is key to suc­cess in post-sec­ondary edu­ca­tion. Take a look at this video which explains the dif­fer­ent com­po­nents relat­ed to metacog­ni­tion for learn­ing.

Learn­ers who enter post-sec­ondary edu­ca­tion are often unaware of what learn­ing entails, and how to improve on exist­ing strate­gies. Evi­dence shows that if the cor­rect strate­gies for learn­ing are applied and learn­ers apply metacog­ni­tion, their chances of suc­cess are great­ly improved. Two key process­es are essen­tial for metacog­ni­tive learn­ing.

1. Knowl­edge of Cog­ni­tion
   1.  Aware­ness of fac­tors that influ­ence your own learn­ing
   2. Know­ing a col­lec­tion of strate­gies to use for learn­ing
   3. Choos­ing the appro­pri­ate strat­e­gy for the spe­cif­ic learn­ing sit­u­a­tion

    

2. Reg­u­la­tion of Cog­ni­tion
   1. Set­ting goals and plan­ning
   2. Mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol­ling learn­ing
   3. Eval­u­at­ing own reg­u­la­tion (assessing/reflecting if the strat­e­gy is work­ing or not, adjust­ing, and try­ing some­thing new)

The dia­gram to the right depicts the metacog­ni­tive cycle devel­oped through the process of knowl­edge and reg­u­la­tion of cog­ni­tion. The arrows remind us that metacog­ni­tive think­ing is a reflec­tive process and requires the learn­er to con­stant­ly scru­ti­nize what is work­ing, what is not, and actions to take.

	Be inten­tion­al about teach­ing metacog­ni­tive skills. When design­ing your course, iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties in which to incor­po­rate strate­gies to teach metacog­ni­tive skills. For exam­ple, you might decide to build metacog­ni­tive strate­gies into an assign­ment, or around your midterms. Decide when to focus on self-reg­u­la­tion skills and when to focus on guid­ing learn­ers to think metacog­ni­tive­ly about course con­tent.
	Be explic­it when teach­ing metacog­ni­tive skills. Talk about metacog­ni­tive skills with your learn­ers; define metacog­ni­tion and explain why devel­op­ing metacog­ni­tive skills is impor­tant dur­ing and after col­lege. If you have struc­tured your course so that spe­cif­ic themes, rela­tion­ships or con­trast­ing per­spec­tives emerge, give learn­ers your road map or use activ­i­ties such as a con­cept map to help them iden­ti­fy it them­selves. In oth­er words, don’t assume that learn­ers will auto­mat­i­cal­ly see rela­tion­ships that might be obvi­ous to you.
	Encour­age goal set­ting. Prompt learn­ers to con­sid­er why they are tak­ing your course, what grade they want to earn and how they plan to achieve that goal. For exam­ple, have learn­ers work in groups to brain­storm strate­gies for earn­ing an “A” in the course.
	Devel­op ways for learn­ers to “stop and take stock” dur­ing class. Dur­ing class, ask learn­ers to pause for 1–2 min­utes and think about what they are doing at that moment (i.e., tak­ing notes, engag­ing in off-task activ­i­ties, work­ing on anoth­er course). After the pause, this could be a good time for learn­ers to ask ques­tions.
	Prompt learn­ers to think about how they pre­pare for class. At the begin­ning of class, show a slide with the prompt “How have I pre­pared for class today?” Ask them to write their answers to a set response option. Show­ing mul­ti­ple response options enables learn­ers to see strate­gies that they might not have thought of on their own. Talk about your expec­ta­tions regard­ing class prepa­ra­tion and why that is impor­tant to their learn­ing.
	Empha­size the impor­tance of learn­ing ver­sus get­ting the cor­rect answer. After pos­ing a ques­tion to the class, give learn­ers time to dis­cuss how they arrived at the answer they chose. Specif­i­cal­ly, ask them to con­sid­er their process, the main rea­son for choos­ing the response, why they dis­card­ed oth­er pos­si­ble steps or answers, how con­fi­dent they were about their answer, etc. Fol­low up with an expla­na­tion of why you have asked them to spend time on this.
	Link the pur­pose of an assign­ment to course objec­tives and pro­fes­sion­al skills. When giv­ing an assign­ment, ask stu­dents to think about why you chose that assign­ment and how it relates to their pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment. See Tables 1 and 2 in Tan­ner 2012 for prompts.