Research School Network: Thinking about ​“thinking about thinking”? Amarbeer Singh Gill talks Metacognition & Self-regulation in advance of our free webinar on 24 February.

Hardeep is a school leader who regularly uses the EEF’s teaching and learning toolkit. She’s had great success using the EEF’s resources when improving her school’s use of feedback and homework, and although she’s noticed ​“metacognition & self-regulation” at the very top, she hasn’t always been sure how to implement it in her school.

Since the launch of the EEF’s toolkit in 2011, ​‘metacognition and self-regulation’ has sat atop the table; the holy grail that, research suggests, can improve progress by eight months* for very little cost.

One of the initial challenges was that there appeared to be a lack of clarity around what metacognition was and how it could be used effectively in classrooms. To try and bridge that gap, in 2018 the EEF published its first guidance report on Metacognition & Self-regulation which outlined 7 recommendations that schools and teachers can use.

The EEF have just released their second edition and in this blog, we’ll look at what’s changed, what’s stayed the same, and how it might support teachers and leaders like Hardeep. To help us do that, it’s perhaps first helpful to define exactly what we mean by metacognition.

What is metacognition?

Metacognition is often described as ​‘thinking about thinking” and while this is a fairly simple definition, it’s not far off. The guidance report defines metacognition as ​“the ability to be aware of, reflect on, and direct your own thinking”.

The guidance however takes this a step further by not just focusing on metacognition, but also including self-regulation, ​“the ability to apply metacognitive strategies to the learning”.

These definitions make clear why both are important: if metacognition is the ability to think about your thinking, self-regulation is the ability to act on those thoughts.

They also hopefully highlight something key: metacognition is not a standalone skill. As the report says, ​“it works best when tied to strong subject knowledge – students can’t think about how they’re learning in a subject without first understanding the subject itself”.

So, what does the new guidance have to say about these ideas and how can they be used in the classroom?

What’s changed? What’s stayed the same?

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that the new guidance report confirms many of the original findings, despite incorporating greater methodological rigour and incorporating evidence from over 350 studies.

Because of this, the seven recommendations from the original report have remained broadly the same, with some small (but important) refinements:

1. Firstly, the focus has shifted to the approaches and strategies that schools and teachers can use.
2. The report includes updated classroom examples and case studies, new tools to help teachers implement metacognitive strategies, and explainer boxes and a new metacognitive talk diagram to clarify misconceptions.

While the previous report did include some of the actions that teachers could take, it generally tended to be a bit more descriptive around what metacognition and self-regulation in pupils could look like. This edition of the report has tried to provide schools and teachers with more practical ways of thinking about and implementing approaches that promote metacognition and self-regulation in their settings.

How can it be used in schools and classrooms?

The increased use of examples has been to help teachers and leaders like Hardeep to contextualise the recommendations. Rather than giving us the points of view of the pupils Freya and Nathan from the last guidance, this edition allows us to think about how we can support our own pupils to become like Freya and Nathan when it comes to their metacognitive approaches.

For example, see the below extract outlining Mr Garcia’s approach when preparing his class to answer a maths question:

This framing makes it significantly easier to bridge the gap between reading the report and attempting to implement the ideas from it in our settings. To support bridging that gap even further, the release of this edition is also accompanied by several practitioner tools that cover areas including promoting metacognitive talk, strategies, and pupil independent learning.

In summary:

1. The updated report supports many of the original findings, in particular:
   a. Metacognitive talk
   b. Modelling think aloud
   c. Explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies
2. The focus has shifted from pupils’ points of view to the approaches that teachers and schools can use to promote metacognition and self-regulation
3. The report includes more examples and is accompanied by several tools to support its implementation.

To find out more about the updated guidance report, join our FREE webinar on Tuesday 24 February where we’ll be delving further into the updated report and looking more closely at what schools and teachers can do to implement these ideas.

* This is the EEF’s way of turning effect sizes into a more easily understandable format, it does not necessarily mean it will move learning on by 8 months. For more details see here.