Metacognition
Contents
What is metacognition?
Metacognition means ‘thinking about our thinking’ (literally, ‘beyond knowing’). It is something most of us do every day without noticing. Teaching young people to reflect on their thoughts can make a big difference to their wellbeing, behaviour and learning.
Metacognition helps us to become aware of what we know about something, what we don’t know and how we can apply learning to different situations. It is the conversation we have in our heads when we ‘talk to ourselves’ and make plans.
How psychology helps us to understand metacognition:
Metacognition describes the processes involved when learners understand how to plan, monitor, evaluate and make changes to their own behaviour and learning, to help achieve a goal. It gives people power over their own performance.
Metacognition has two main areas:
- Knowing what skills I already have, what skills are needed to complete a task, and what strategies I might try.
- Monitoring how well these strategies are working and changing to a new strategy if necessary. Using metacognition can help us to understand our own learning better.
Five fab facts about metacognition function
- Helps to promote deep, analytical and creative thinking
- Helps us to become effective communicators and team players
- Turns passive learners into active learners
- Can promote wellbeing and resilience
- Gives pupils a sense of control over their learning
Top tips to help children and young people:
Remember: progress happens when we are patient! Metacognition calls for some high order skills which take time to master. Parents and school staff have to trust that the work needed is happening behind the scenes in the brain – even if it doesn’t always appear that way!
1. Ask questions that encourage reflective thinking
Suitable questions will be:
- Open-ended, giving the learner space to reflect on their thinking. For example; “Can you tell me more about why you think that?”
- Non-judgemental and non-blaming e.g. “What happened next? What were you thinking when that happened? What were you feeling?”
- Solution-focused. For example, “Can you think of a time when someone did give you something you asked for?”
- Process-oriented. For example, “What things will you need? How much time have you got? What’s the first step? What will you do next? How will you know when your drawing is finished?”
2. Explore helpful thoughts
Encourage pupils to consider how helpful their thoughts are. For example:
Q. What do you think when a maths lesson starts?
A. I’m going to get the answer wrong everyone will laugh at me
Q. What would the strongest, wisest, kindest person you know say?
A. It’s ok to say, ‘I don’t know.’ Remind yourself of all the things you can do.
Q. Which of these two thoughts is more helpful to you?
3. Encourage a growth mind set
Learners can develop a ‘fixed mind-set’ that makes them passive when approaching a challenge. Some learners believe they either can or can’t do something. By teaching metacognitive skills, we can move learners from this ‘fixed mind-set’ towards one of self-awareness, personal responsibility, growth and resilience. For example:
Fixed Mind-set thinking
“I got the best/worst marks in the class”
“You didn’t do as well as…”
“Why haven’t you finished the worksheet?”
Growth Mind-set questions
“Is there another way to tackle this problem?”
“I know it’s hard, but I’ve noticed how you get quicker and more accurate the more you practice.”
“I saw you going to get a book to help you when you were stuck. That’s a great learning skill.”
4. Practice sorting and categorising skills
Some learners find metacognition particularly difficult and don’t seem to get better even when you try the things that have already been suggested. In these situations, we need to take things back to basics.
First, introduce concepts of ‘like’ and ‘not like’ using:
- Spot the difference pictures
- Sorting paired pictures into ‘same’ and ‘different’ trays
- Playing matching games such as ‘Snap’
Collect together a number of similar objects that share/don’t share a given property
- E.g. short and tall green wooden blocks, fluffy and smooth toys, cards with words ending with –ing or –ed, characters from a book who display / do not display a given characteristic
- Introduce the target concepts and words to the child. Sort the items into two groups for the child, then together, then ask the child to sort the items.
Third, explore similarities and differences
Collect together a number of topic-related objects. Ask the child to choose three of them. Encourage the child to say which two of these objects are most like each other, and ask why they chose these. How is the third object different to the first two? Keep doing this and write down the child’s ideas.
Other helpful ideas
The Education Endowment Foundation have published a guidance report with recommendations for promoting metacognition in schools, educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/metacognition