Spotlight on Unlocking the Power of Metacognition

Metacognition is a somewhat elusive approach to improving students’ learning. It is repeatedly cited in research as having the greatest impact on student outcomes, although practitioners are often unclear as to teaching approaches to support embedding metacognitive approaches in students’ learning. Often the core skills of plan, monitor and evaluate are difficult to communicate and are dismissed by students, keen to get to the ‘right’ answer, not interested in the process by which they get to this. 

There are however several key approaches that teachers use day in day out that support metacognition and by homing in on these and thinking about the intentionality of the approach to the student and the task adaptively, they can rapidly accelerate learning. 

Modelling and scaffolding are embedded in all teachers’ practice, from modelling sounds in early years phonics teaching, to sentence stems in A-level essays. If we are to think about this ‘bridge’ to independence effectively, we must also think about the intentionality and that means the transition to independence and how we remove redundant scaffolds as a learner transitions to independence. 

Motivation is also a key facet of metacognition to encourage successful independent learning. As practitioners and even parents, we all rely on rewards that tap into extrinsic motivation, but we know we are aiming for personal motivation and intrinsic drive. How to determine this is individual and challenging. Nonetheless planning for motivation is vital, if we are not motivated to learn and complete a task, we aren’t even out of the starting blocks.  

Consequently, task setting and knowledge of learners’ capabilities and prior learning is key. The ‘goldilocks principle’ should be applied: not too easy, not too hard. James Clear adopts this analogy in his bestseller ‘Atomic Habits’, applying it to our working lives: again, we need a healthy balance: enough challenge so we are not bored, but not too much that we feel over overwhelmed. A state of flow in our work and learning is what we aim for. 

Metacognition can be taught, and there are several active teaching strategies that practitioners can use in their classrooms intentionally. A Metacognitive Toolkit is one such training approach to embedding metacognition teaching approaches. For more information on our course, click here.