By Jaya Carrier
I hope everyone’s having a great week so far! This week, continuing with our theme on student-centred learning for T3, I was really interested in this editorial article about metacognition by Muijs in the Impact publication given by the Chartered College of Teaching.
Objectives: To outline some of the recent educational research on metacognition and outline some of the strategies to foster better metacognition.
Summary:
- Muijs argues In the emerging research literature on metacognition, better clarity on the differences between metacognition and self-regulation are required.
- This article argues that self-regulation is broader than metacognition, and that in fact, metacognition is a part of self-regulation. Muijs then defines self-regulation as being in three main parts; cognition, metacognition and motivation.
- Metacognition is about ways that learners appraise their learning processes in an ongoing way, and therein purposefully redirect their learning where necessary.
- Metacognition is not innate and can be deliberately taught and improved using certain teaching strategies that involve planning, monitoring and evaluation.
- Metacognitive knowledge can also be honed by:
- Making generalisations or rules in terms of a thinking strategy
- Deliberating naming the thinking strategy
- Explaining when and when not to use particular thinking strategies
- Generic ideas about ‘learning skills’ may be less helpful than subject-specific strategies for metacognition, although there will be some crossover.
How does this impact me and my practice?:
Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:
- How do I define self-regulation and metacognition?
- What strategies have I deployed that involve the processes of planning, monitoring and evaluation?
- What ‘thinking strategies’ do I use with students? How do I get them to explore these and how appropriate they are for certain tasks?
If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.
Thanks for sharing this Jaya. Discussion of metacognition with students is invaluable in an IB/student-centred/personalised learning environment and the earlier we can help students take ownership of their learning, the better their chances of academic success and the more prepared they will be for whatever they do after WA.
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