Research School Network: Why is Metacognition so important yet elusive?

Metacognition is the buzz word of educational buzz words at the moment. Having spent the last two years looking into the impacts of ​“Direct Instruction on the metacognitive ability of 13 – 14 year old student” as part of my MA in education, it is also a topic I found myself talking about with other professionals quite often. Last week talking to a colleague, the discussion came to the conclusion that metacognition is perhaps the ​“holy grail” of education creating self-efficacy within students and resulting in durable and transferrable learning,(Taylor, 1999). As such metacognition has been identified by the Education Endowment Fund (Higgins, 2012) as the joint most effective strategy to enhance student progress, yet it remains tantalisingly ellusive.
The problem, is that metacognition is difficult to grasp, understand and more importantly develop within the classroom. There is perhaps two reasons for this; a lack of coherence in regards to understanding what it is and secondly limited knowledge of how to implement it within the classroom.
Let us begin with problem one – what is metacognition? Despite its importance, much of the metacognitive research seems to stem from various definitions; establishing a lack of coherence (Veenman et al, 2006) and restricting its deployment in teaching (Kuhn, 2000). First coined by Flavell (1979) metacognition can be simply considered as ​“thinking about thinking”. Perhaps the most useful working definition of metacognition for the class room teacher is that given by Martinez (2006) who identifies three types of metacognition; metacomprehension, metamemory and problem-solving. Metamemory and metacomprehension refer to our understanding/​appraisal of our knowledge and comprehension, while problem-solving is regarded as thinking about what to do when you don’t know what to do. If as teachers we are to develop metacognitively aware student, then we must focus instruction on developing students that are appreciative of their own knowledge and capable of confronting alien problems.
Kruger and Dunning (1999) and Dunning et al (2003) have both found evidence that individuals with poor metacognitive skills perform less well academically than their peers, possibly because their more metacognitively aware peers avoid persevering in unproductive strategies (Tanner, 2012) and are better placed to control their dispositions and devise structured learning strategies. Meanwhile studies by Veenman et al (2006) claim that metacognitive skills significantly contribute to performance, accounting for 17% of variance in learning outcomes compared to only 10% for intelligence. Subsequently, although research clear advocates the merits of developing metacognitive ability within our students, there is a significant gap to be bridged between wanting and knowing how to develop metacognitive skills. Unfortunately some educators may lack the knowledge, or more commonly the confidence, to effectively teach metacognitive strategies, while some may neglect it in the face of curriculum demands (Tanner, 2012). As such there is a growing body of research into practical classroom strategies to develop student metacognition.
One of the most supported metacognitive instruction strategies is the explicit modelling of expert metacognition and procedures (Martinez, 2006). This is regularly referred to as ​“think-aloud”. Such strategies involve the teacher (expert) verbalising the thought processes with which they engage when completing tasks. It is often these processes that are invisible or at least covert to our students, and thus need to be made explicit to our students, however as Tanner (2012) discusses, it can be difficult as a professional to remember a time when we did not think as one and, therefore, showing students explicitly how we think procedurally can be surprisingly challenging, As such think-aloud instruction requires careful pre-planning before teaching. In many cases think-aloud protocols are intrinsically linked to live modelling, which enables the teacher/​expert to demonstrate the metacognitive processes much more clearly than with pre-done models, created on PowerPoints etc. In similar fashion much research advocates the promotion of general metacognitive awareness, encouraging educators to not shy away from highlighting to students the difference between cognition and metacognition and stressing its worth (Martinez, 2006).

Another strategy being increasingly used in metacognitive studies is assessment analysis (Hartman, 2001) whereby students are asked to review their performance post-assessment, potentially predict their grade and identify areas of strength and weakness in their performance. Soicher and Gurung (2017) and Lovett (2013) refer to these as ​“exam wrappers”. These exam wrappers prompt students to reflect on three important components of learning, exam preparation, errors made and adjustments to future learning. As such assessment analysis/​exam wrappers encourage students to reflect and evaluate on their academic performance and as such make metacognitive improvements for future tasks. 

Exam wrappers are popular with both students and teachers alike as they don’ take up much class time, however findings from Soicher and Gurung (2017) suggest that exam wrappers rarely work in isolation, and need to be implemented across of variety of subjects for students metacognitive and academic performance showing positive trends.
However we wish to develop metacognitive instruction and skills within our classrooms, the research clearly encourages us to do so. While it may seems illusive and intangible strategies such as ​“think aloud” protocols and ​“exam wrappers” provide a concrete starting block from which to begin accessing and developing the metacognitive ability of our students.

References:
Dunning. D, Johnson. K, Ehrlinger, J and Kruger.J, 2003, Why people fail to recognize their own incompetence, Current directions in psychological science, 12, 3, pp.83 – 87.
Flavell. J. H, 1979, Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive developmental inquiry, American Psychologist, 34, 10, pp 906 – 911.
Higgins. S, Kokotsaki. D and Coe. R, 2012, The teaching and learning toolkit. Education Endowment Foundation and Sutton Trust.
Kruger. J and Dunning. D, 1999, Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments, Journal of personality and social psychology, 77, 6, pp.1121 – 1134
Kuhn. D, 2000, Metacognitive development, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 5, pp 178 – 181.
Lovett, M. C, 2013, Make exams worth more than the grade: Using exam wrappers to promote metacognition. In M. Kaplan, N. Silver, D. LaVague-Manty & D. Meizlish (Eds.), Using reflection and metacognition to improve student learning: Across the disciplines, across the academy (pp. 18 – 52)
Martinez. M. E, 2006, What is metacognition? Phi Delta Kappan, pp 696 – 699.
Soicher, R. N., & Gurung, R. A., 2017, Do exam wrappers increase metacognition and performance? A single course intervention. Psychology Learning & Teaching, 16(1), 64 – 73.
Tanner. K.D, 2012, Promoting student metacognition, CBE-Life Sciences Education, 11, 2, pp.113 – 120.
Taylor. S, 1999, Better learning through better thinking: Developing students’ metacognitive abilities, Journal of College Reading and Learning, 30, 1, pp.34 – 45.
Veenman. M.V. J, Van Hout-Wolters. B.H. A. M and Afflerbach. P, 2006, Metacognition and learning: Conceptual and methodological considerations, Metacognition and Learning, 1, pp