Benefits of Metacognition

List­ed below are ways that metacog­ni­tion can pos­i­tive­ly affect learn­ers.

• Devel­op­ment of inde­pen­dent learn­ers. More self-aware as crit­i­cal thinkers and prob­lem solvers, enabling them to active­ly approach knowl­edge gaps and prob­lems and to rely on them­selves.
• Able to mon­i­tor, plan, and con­trol their men­tal process­es.
• Bet­ter able to assess the depth of their knowl­edge
• Able to iden­ti­fy effec­tive learn­ing strate­gies
• Bet­ter able to trans­fer knowl­edge
• More like­ly to per­form bet­ter aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly
• Emo­tion­al and social growth

This is pow­er­ful infor­ma­tion that could also be shared in class with learn­ers to get “buy in” about think­ing metacog­ni­tive­ly in their stud­ies.

Check out this short activ­i­ty [PDF, Word Doc]  to use with your learn­ers – to get them think­ing about think­ing and learn­ing. This activ­i­ty helps them to devel­op a toolk­it of ways that they can use to improve their learn­ing and reten­tion of infor­ma­tion and helps them to share and learn from one anoth­er.

*Should be used at begin­ning, midterm and end of semes­ter to role mod­el the impor­tance of con­tin­u­al review of learn­ing strate­gies*

Dr. Stephen Chew is a cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist from Sam­ford and has a series of excel­lent videos that can also be shared with stu­dents to bet­ter help them under­stand the ben­e­fits of metacog­ni­tion for their learn­ing. Below is video 1 in a 5 part series by Dr. Chew. Con­sid­er shar­ing these videos with your class!

Inter­est­ed in watch­ing them all? Here is the Youtube link