By Russell Peagram
The Context
If we want success for all, we cannot rely on students “picking up” good learning habits by chance. The students who already know how to plan, monitor and adjust their learning tend to keep getting better. The students who don’t often work harder, not smarter, and fall behind. Even as adults, as professionals, we hit the wall in our “capacity”< and to overcome this and reach the level, we sometimes need a coach to move across “the edge”. Our students are no different!
The evidence & research
That is why explicitly teaching metacognition and self-management matters: it helps more students access challenging curriculum and make sustained progress. The strongest school-facing summary of the evidence comes from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). Their guidance on metacognition and self-regulated learning highlights consistent positive impacts when these strategies are taught and embedded, with the EEF toolkit often summarising this as around +7 to +8 months of progress, on average, when implemented well. This is also promising for equity: the EEF notes the potential for metacognition and self-regulation to support disadvantaged pupils when teaching is explicit and carefully scaffolded.
So what does this look like in practice? Metacognition is not simply “thinking about thinking.” In classrooms, it becomes three teachable behaviours:
Planning (What’s the goal? What strategy will I use?)
Monitoring (Is this working? What am I missing?)
Evaluating (What would I do differently next time?)
This aligns with established research on self-regulated learning, where successful learners use forethought, performance monitoring, and reflection to improve outcomes over time.
Self-management strengthens this further. When students learn to manage attention, time, and effort, they can actually use the strategies we teach. That’s why the most effective classrooms combine cognitive strategies with routines that support focus and follow-through: clear success criteria, structured independent practice, and reflection that leads to a specific next step.
Practical classroom tips you can use this week
Model the thinking, not just the method. Use “I’m going to…” statements: “I’ll skim the question first, pick the key data, then decide which formula fits.”
Teach a simple planning routine. Before tasks: Goal → Strategy → Time. (30 seconds, every lesson.)
Build in monitoring prompts. Mid-task checkpoints: “What have you assumed?” “What evidence supports this?” “What’s your next step?”
Use retrieval as metacognition. Low-stakes quizzes plus a quick reflection: “Which question surprised you, and what will you do about it?”
Make reflection actionable. Replace “What went well?” with: “What will you repeat next time?” and “What will you change?”
