Definitions, Underpinnings, and Benefits
- Metacognition literally means “cognition about cognition”. Metacognition is defined as awareness and control of thinking and is conceptualized as having distinct facets, which are illustrated in Figure 1 below:
- Metacognitive knowledge, or awareness (and beliefs) about cognition, which involves:
- Declarative knowledge is knowledge about how the mind operates, knowing yourself as a learner, and knowing which cognitive procedures (or study strategies), are best suited for learning. For example, knowing that learning is boosted by retrieval practice (recalling information from memory) as compared to simply rereading course content.
- Procedural knowledge is knowledge about how to perform a cognitive-based procedure (or a study strategy). For example, knowing how to best use retrieval practice to improve achievement.
- Conditional knowledge is knowledge about when and why to use a cognitive-based procedure (or study strategy). For example, knowing that testing during practice boosts performance after long retention intervals but not immediately after practice is conditional knowledge.
- Metacognitive regulation, or control of cognition, which involves:
- Planning on how to obtain one’s learning objectives;
- Monitoring the progress one is making while studying or while taking a test;
- Evaluating how one prepared for an exam and one’s overall success, such as deciding which of two strategies was more effective at helping a student perform well on an exam.
- Metacognitive knowledge, or awareness (and beliefs) about cognition, which involves:
Metacognitive facets are malleable and can improve either through direct instruction or more organically through experience learning and studying.
- Metacognitive facets are central to effective self-regulated learning, which in general refers to learning that is metacognitively guided by students. For example, when regulating their learning, students may rely on their metacognitive knowledge to select strategies for achieving a learning goal. They may rely on their metacognitive regulation to monitor how effectively they have acquired knowledge toward achieving their goal, regulate or adjust their strategies, and then subsequently evaluate the quality of their exam preparation.
- Study strategies include the knowledge and beliefs students hold about how to learn course content and prepare for exams. Accordingly, study strategies comprise an important subset of declarative knowledge.
- A mnemonic tool pertains to activities or strategies that improve students’ learning (or memory) of content, whereas a metacognitive tool pertains to any activities that help students to accurately monitor or control their learning.
Figure 1: Metacognition framework (modified from Schraw & Moshman, 1995)
Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive-developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34, 906-911. In his classic article, John Flavell introduced foundational concepts of metacognition and proposed “that the monitoring of a wide variety of cognitive enterprises occurs through the actions of and interactions among four classes of phenomena: (a) metacognitive knowledge, (b) metacognitive experiences, (c) goals (or tasks), and (d) actions (or strategies)” (p. 906). For example, a student may have the goal to complete a worksheet involving word problems relevant to molecular biology, and her metacognitive knowledge may include that she stays more focused in a quiet room (than when music is playing) and that she learns more when using worked examples. Thus, she decides to use worked examples (a strategy) and monitors her progress toward completing her goal (which involves metacognitive experiences). A theme that Flavell emphasizes throughout this brief and powerful introduction to metacognition is that the quality of people’s metacognition can impact their success and performance on a task – success is simply not just a function of the integrity of one’s cognitive system (e.g. working memory ability). A second theme – highlighted in the article’s title – is that aspects of metacognition develop across the lifespan. Based on this introduction to metacognition, instructors should note that: (1) metacognition is multi-faceted, (2) metacognition develops over time, and (3) educational interventions aimed at improving students’ metacognition promise to improve their achievement.
The underpinnings of metacognition pertain to how and when students rely on metacognition to guide their learning:
- Metacognitive self-regulation can occur at various stages of a students’ progress in a course: when they are studying, while they are taking a test, or after they take a test.
- Metacognitive knowledge, regulation, and monitoring comprise the foundations of self-regulated learning.
- Students use their monitoring to make decisions about how to control their learning and retrieval performance.
The theoretical underpinnings above have a variety of implications for the role of metacognition in student achievement. There are several known benefits of metacognition:
- Students with stronger metacognitive skills have higher academic achievement, and they are more expert-like in their learning.
- Students who are better at monitoring what they do and don’t know (i.e., are more accurate in metacognitive monitoring) can focus their studying and learning efforts on the content that they know less well.
- Students who have better knowledge about which strategies are most beneficial to their learning are expected to be more effective learners.
- Metacognitive awareness positively correlates with problem solving skills.
But, given that metacognition is multi-faceted, each component of metacognition should be considered:
- Although accurate monitoring is essential for effective monitoring-based control, students have no direct access to how well material is represented in their mind, and hence their monitoring is based on inferences based on accessible cues that can be error-prone.
- Metacognitive knowledge, monitoring, and regulation are malleable and research has revealed that at least some of these facets can be trained through instruction.