A general definition: 

         “Metacognition is the ability to understand our cognitive processes and 

          to develop information about our resources and skills and use them to our advantage.”

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A definition from teachers’ perspective: 

      “Metacognition is the practice of teaching and encouraging students to understand their cognitive processes and to develop information about their resources and skills and use them to their advantage.”


Through distancing, self-observation, and self-reflection, we can understand how we learn and direct our cognitive processes toward our goals.

To simplify, metacognition can be understood as the instructions we give ourselves on how to perform a particular learning task, while cognition is how we actually do it.


On the other hand, cognition includes the skills needed to encode, relate, consolidate, and retrieve information; metacognition incorporates strategies that enable understanding and control of cognitive processes.

Solving an equation is a cognitive function; reflecting on the answer and realising that the solution obtained does or doesn’t fit the givens in the problem, is part of the metacognitive processes.

From an educational perspective, metacognition is particularly relevant because it enables students to evaluate their own thoughts and makes it possible to recognise, guide and improve their learning process. Today, more than ever, it is necessary to help our students become autonomous and effective learners. Encouraging the use of metacognitive strategies is one way to achieve this.

Do you want to go deeper? Read the article “Cognition and Metacognition“ or go on reading this text. If you think you have understand the core concept you can go to the following lesson.

When students perform metacognition, there are three important components that they do, namely awareness, regulation, and evaluation (Magiera & Zawojewski, 2011; Wilson & Clarke, 2002, 2004).

To improve metacognition skills, the first step is the awareness that students must have in every step of their thinking. Metacognitive awareness can stimulate a process of regulation, then they can continue to the evaluation process, with a review of the effectiveness of the strategy they chose, the assessment of their progress, ability, or understanding (Purnomo & Bekti, 2021).

Over the years, a number of models have been developed to explain how metacognition acts, among them: the Flavell’s model of cognitive monitoring, the Brown’s model of metacognitive knowledge and regutation, Scharw’s model of metacognition. If you are interested in this model you can read an interesting paper that present all these models: "What is metacognition?", in Critical Maths for Innovative Societies: The Role of Metacognitive Pedagogies, OECD Publishing (2014), Paris.

Cognitive strategies can be general and specific.

General strategies are applicable in all learning situations, in fact they concern the abilities to:

  • set goals to be achieved;
  • summarise;
  • classifying;
  • schematising;
  • develop inductive reasoning.

Specific strategies can only be used in certain areas or in specific types of activities, such as:

  • in analysing a text, use paraphrasing to better fix the contents ...;
  • in solving a mathematical problem, use graphic representations that better clarify the structure of the problem and the steps to solve it.

Metacognitive strategies work on the subject's awareness of the strategies he selects to proceed in analysing a task, which he considers useful, functional to the task, etc., that is, how the subject proceeds to Self-regulate his own behaviour (Azevero, 2009).

The teacher's role is to promote active and creative use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies, to lead students to develop the mental habit of questioning themselves, planning their goals, finding ways to proceed, etc.

References

To prepare this module about metacognition, we consulted many papers, books, and articles:

  • Boud, D., & Soler, R. (2016). Sustainable assessment revisited. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41(3), 400-413.
  • Darling-Hammond, Linda, Austin, K., Cheung, M., & Martin, D. (2003). Thinking about thinking: Metacognition. The learning classroom: Theory into practice. Stanford University School of Education.
  • Flavell, John H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34(10), 906–911.
  • Magiera, M. T., & Zawojewski, J. S. (2011). Characterizations of social-based and self-based contexts associated with students' awareness, evaluation, and regulation of their thinking during small-group mathematical modeling. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 42(5), 486-520.
  • Purnomo, D., Bekti, S., Sulistyorini, Y., & Napfiah, S. (2021). The Analysis of Students' Ability in Thinking Based on Cognitive Learning Style. Anatolian Journal of Education, 6(2), 13-26.
  • Tsai, Y. H., Lin, C. H., Hong, J. C., & Tai, K. H. (2018). The effects of metacognition on online learning interest and continuance to learn with MOOCs. Computers & Education, 121, 18-29.
  • Tanner, Kimberly D. (2012). Promoting student metacognition. CBE–Life Sciences Education, 11(2), 113–120.
  • Wilson, J., & Clarke, D. (2004). Towards the modelling of mathematical metacognition. Mathematics Education Research Journal, 16(2), 25-48.
  • Azevedo, R. (2009). Theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and instructional issues in research on metacognition and self-regulated learning: A discussion. Metacognition and Learning, 4, 87-95.