Metacognition and Learning
Psychology of Learning
It is well understood that learning is not a passive reception of knowledge. Learners must be active participants in the process, as the learning must be done by the student. Perhaps most important in the learning process is a student’s ability to regulate his or her own learning through metacognition.
Role of Metacognition
Metacognition is “thinking about thinking.” It is a higher-order thinking skill that involves active control over the learning processes. Being engaged in the learning process enables us to be successful learners. For example, creating and taking a self-quiz is an effective way to monitor what you have learned.
Teaching Metacognition
Better metacognitive skills can be learned. Students can be taught how to better manage their learning activities by practicing metacognitive strategies to evaluate their learning outcomes.
Through Cognitive Strategy Instruction (CS), students can become more strategic, self-reliant, flexible, and productive in their learning (Livingston, 1997). The assumption with CSI is that these strategies can be learned by most students. In a classroom setting, Filho (2009) found that high metacognitive students had personally adopted more deep-processing strategies as well as performed more individual and group review activities. This led to better understanding of the material from the test-taking experience. The exciting implication is that in addition to learning from classroom instruction and test preparation, students had used metacognitive tools during testing and were able to leverage these strategies as part of their learning experience.
Summary: Role of Metacognition
- Learning is more than a cognitive exercise
- Motivation and self-esteem play a role
- Metacognition also plans an important role in learning
- Metacognition is “thinking about thinking”
- Metacognition is also important in testing
- Metacognitive skills can be learned
Student Reflection
A simple way to get students to engage in metacognition is to have them “reflect” on their answers during and after test-taking.
Reflection During Assessment
Reflection can occur during the test-taking experience by asking students to mark or “flag” their answers for later review. Students can also be asked to rate the confidence in the answers. For example, Chen (2009) found that students who marked their answers (i.e., flagged their answers for later review) during test-taking and were given metacognitively-evaluated feedback performed better on a vocabulary and reading comprehension test. Medium-ability students showed the greatest benefit for this activity, which is encouraging since that group was targeted to have the most potential for improvement.
Reflection Post Assessment
After the assessment has been scored, another way to engage students in metacognition is to have them reflect on their answers. Specifically, students can be asked to provide a rationale for why they answered the question incorrectly (e.g., “I guessed”, “I made a mistake”, “I don’t know the concept”). While (most importantly), this provides students a way to practice metacognition, teachers can also be provided with very useful information about their students. For example, aggregated over time, these reflections can tell a teacher whether the student has a tendency to make simple mistakes. Knowing this, the teacher can adjust instruction or help the student adjust studying tactics.
Summary: Metacognition and Test-taking
- Reflection is an effective way to engage students in metacognition
- Reflection can be used during test-taking by asking students to mark or rate their answers
- Reflection can also be used after test-taking by asking students to give rationales for their wrong answers
- Both reflection techniques help students learn through testing