Success for All: Can Metacognition and Self-Management Improve Student Progress?

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:

1. Planning (What’s the goal? What strategy will I use?)

2. Monitoring (Is this working? What am I missing?)

3. 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?”
  
  

Bitesize Research: Strategies To Measure Progress

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s had a great week - and that when the holiday does come around, that everyone has a restful break! This week, following on from Rob’s briefing about drive and purpose, I was really interested in an article by Isabella Wallace, who has published widely on different education themes. Here she discusses the importance of pupils being able to see their own progress, as well as offering some practical strategies about how progress can be shown in different activities. Objectives: To understand strategies for measuring progress in a lesson. Summary:

• Wallace argues that students seeing their own progress is very important because it’s highly motivating.
• Some of the practical strategies proposed by Wallace in the article to show progress include:
• Before and after snapshots - this could be done in lots of ways but includes asking students to define a concept at the start of the lesson, and then to define it again at the end of the lesson, incorporating everything they’ve been learning (‘boarding and landing cards’)
• Getting students to add to what they know by using different colour pens - so they can see the progress over time
• Getting students to pose their own questions at the start of a lesson, and getting them to answer these at the end of a lesson
• Wallace also cautions against things that do not meaningfully show progress. This includes - asking students to show you thumbs up or thumbs down if they understand.
  

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• How do I measure the progress of my students across the course of a lesson? And across the course of a term?
• How well do my students understand their own progress?
• What might the benefits be of highlighting progress to students be?

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.

Bitesize Research: Role Of Perfectionism In Progress Of More Able Learners

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone has had a great week so far. I’ve been looking this week into research about more able students (or HPAs). I came across a really interesting NACE (National Association for Able Children in Education) blog post about some forthcoming meta-analysis that will be published later this year in Educational Psychology Review that they’ve conducted in conjunction with academics from York St. John University. They also presented some of their findings in this YouTube video. Objectives:

To understand the role of perfectionism in the progress and attainment of more able learners. Summary:

• This study categorises perfectionism into two categories; perfectionist strivings (extent to which students strive for unrealistic personal standards) and perfectionist concerns (extent to which students fear making mistakes or receiving negative feedback).
• This meta-analysis looked at data on 10,000 able learners who were part of 36 studies. These suggest that perfectionist concerns have the biggest impact on learning, and have a strong correlation to depression, alienation from parents, lower motivation and self-esteem.
• On the other hand, perfectionist strivings appeared to be correlated with more variable outcomes that were both positive and negative; for example, there was a correlation with strong academic performance, but also with lower happiness and lower creativity.
• The blog suggests that those working with more able learners need to be mindful of the consequences of perfectionism. They should look to reduce both types of perfectionism, but particularly perfectionist strivings.
• It proposes that teachers can and should play a role in creating environments that are less perfectionistic and focus on creativity, problem-solving and appropriate levels of challenge.
• Likewise, teachers can help more able students ‘reframe setbacks’ as an integral part of the learning process whilst being mindful that more able learners often find setbacks more stressful.

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• Do any of my HPA students demonstrate the ‘perfectionist strivings’ or ‘perfectionist concerns’?
• How do these manifest in their attitude towards learning in your classroom?
• How can I help my students by focusing on creativity and problem-solving?
• What does ‘appropriate challenge’ look like in my subject?
  

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, Jaya

What Is The Impact Of SLA Marking On Student Attainment In Science?

As part of the Extending Influence and Impacting Others module of the PGDE via Teachfirst, second year trainees have to carry out an action-research-style project on an area of their choosing. This is Jenny's summary of the evaluation she has carried out in Science over the past two terms.

By Jennifer Scott

In my final module for my PGDE, I recently investigated the research question: What is the impact of detailed SLA marking on students’ attainment in science? Here I will outline the investigation, in the hope of sparking some discussions around marking across the school! Motivation: My main motivation for this investigation was that day-to-day discussions with other teachers suggested that our written feedback in Science was not having the impact that it ‘should’. Therefore, I wanted to investigate whether the approach to SLA marking we were using in Science could be improved. Literature summary (in brief): The EEF has a wide-ranging Marking Review including several suggestions. Some which we have already embedded into the marking policy itself are: to provide specific, actionable feedback; and to allow students time in lessons to respond. There is also a word of caution: if students are producing “superficial responses” then the impact of marking is likely to be smaller. A lack of motivation appears to be a significant factor in whether students respond in sufficient depth to their actions One potential cause of this could be their mindset: as described by Dweck (2006) (as well as on the poster in every classroom!), students with a ‘fixed mindset’ are less likely to believe that they can improve their ability, whereas students with a ‘growth mindset’ believe that they can improve with effort and practice, and thus are more likely to make the most of SLA feedback. Also, Henderson and Harper (2009) noted that whilst teachers generally viewed assessments as formative, students viewed them as summative, and therefore were less motivated to improve their knowledge on a given subject after the assessment. A suggestion from the EEF which we have not yet embedded is to distinguish between “mistakes” (caused by carelessness) and “errors” (caused by lack of understanding).

Methodology and Results: Part 1: Surveys to collect teacher and student views All Science teachers completed a survey on their views of science SLA marking, as did 83 Year 9 students. The results bore out five key messages about our current SLA marking: A high proportion of students do not complete their SLA responses fully; More than 80% of students feel they understand the purpose of SLA feedback (despite only 50% of teachers thinking they did!), but they tend to frame it negatively e.g. “to see what we got wrong” (as opposed to “to see how to improve” etc.). This provides some evidence of a lack of student ‘growth mindset’;

• Consistency in marking methods is present between teachers, but teachers are not sure if these methods have a positive impact on students;
• Teacher workload: if the feedback is not having a positive impact on students, time spent marking feels wasted.
• Accessibility of actions: teachers felt that content often needed to be retaught in order for students to respond to actions, while students equally felt that if they did not know the answer in the test, they still would not know the answer for the SLA. Some teachers have already been working to improve this by providing students with specific resources to use when completing their actions.

All these points served to reinforce my motivation and informed some trial changes made in part 2. Part 2: Comparing a ‘normal’ SLA, no SLA, and a new SLA I chose to carry out this investigation with my two Year 9 classes in parallel. After a regular end-of-topic test, each class received feedback before being given a ‘retest’. This took place in two stages (at the end of two consecutive topics). 9Z4 were the ‘control’ group, completing the usual style of SLA after going through a few ‘frequently missed’ questions with the class, before completing the retest the following day. They did the same process in both stages. This consists of a Strength I identify, a specific Literacy target, and 2-3 specific Actions, which are usually questions or tasks which ask students to consolidate upon or expand upon areas of misconception I had picked up from the marking. 9X4, on the other hand, did not complete an SLA in stage 1: they only went through frequently missed questions as a class, before immediately completing the retest. In the second stage, 9X4 completed an SLA with some trial changes, before completing the retest the following day. Neither class was given much warning of the retest, to increase the likelihood that any improvement was due to the feedback and not extra study! The main change in the updated version of the SLA involved students completing a ‘review table’ of all questions, noting why they lost marks and giving an explanation/correction (example seen below). This is strongly weighted towards student metacognition rather than personalised teacher feedback. I tried to incorporate a teacher-directed action as well, but it felt like too many different tasks for students to complete within the SLA lesson. The surprising results of the two stages can be seen below: there was no statistically significant difference in the percentage of students improving their score, regardless of whether they had completed the SLA or just gone through some questions (stage 1). It should also be noted that the average percentage score improvement was roughly the same at ~13%. Equally in stage 2, there was no significant difference in percentage of students improving between the current and updated SLA methods. This could be for various reasons, not detailed here for brevity.

Conclusions and looking forward: Overall, it can be said that the current SLA marking in the science department ‘works’ (for most students; in the short term), in that it does allow students to improve their knowledge on the given topic. However, it does not give a significantly different improvement in students’ attainment than simply going through the most frequently missed test questions with the class. This raises the following questions:

• How can we ensure that students engage fully with marking?
• How can we frame end-of-topic tests more formatively, so that students are more likely to see the importance of working to improve on them?
• What is the best approach to marking end-of-topic tests to ensure they have maximum impact on student learning?

I would be very interested to hear others’ views on the questions posed here, how they apply within their own subjects and any suggestions in response (I have a few of my own)!

References:

EEF (2016) A marked improvement? Education Endowment Foundation. Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Presentations/Publications/EEF_Marking_Review_April_2016.pdf.

Dweck, C. (2017) Mindset - Updated Edition: Changing The Way You Think To Fulfil Your Potential. Hachette UK. Available at: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=ckoKDQAAQBAJ.

Henderson, C. and Harper, K. A. (2009) ‘Quiz Corrections: Improving Learning by Encouraging Students to Reflect on Their Mistakes’, Physics Teacher, 47(9), pp. 581–586. doi: 10.1119/1.3264589.

Bitesize Research: Understanding How Proficiency In English Impacts Student Progress

By Jaya Carrier

At WA, we teach a large proportion of students who would be classified as EAL. As such, new research published by the University of Oxford and Bell Foundation in March 2021 looking at proficiency in English, progress and LA variation. 

Objectives: To understand the impact of proficiency in English on student progress.

Summary:  

The key overall themes are:

• As the term ‘EAL’ represents a very broad and heterogenous group of students, this study argues that it is a blunt tool to provide meaningful information about a student’s likelihood of fulfilling their potential. This study therefore argues that the idea of ‘proficiency in English’ is the most valuable and important factor in determining the support required by different EAL learners.

• At high levels of proficiency there are positive associations between speaking more than one language and achievement. What is typically a barrier to achievement is low proficiency in the language of instruction at school.

• For most pupils, it takes up to six years for students to move from the lowest to highest level of proficiency in English. This does not seem to be impacted by the age of the child upon starting learning English, and therefore students are likely to need up to six years of support following their first learning of English. There is some variation between ethnic groups here too - wherein, minorities groups encompassing ‘White Other’ on average take longer to reach higher proficiency levels in English.

• The study also suggests that making judgements about students’ proficiency in English is more impacted by the assessor than the student themselves. Therefore, accurate, consistent assessment is necessary in order to ensure that pupils are given appropriate support to progress in proficiency in English and gain access to the curriculum.

• There is no evidence that in schools with high levels of students with low proficiency in English that academic achievement more broadly is impacted.

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How can I work with the EAL team to support students who currently have low proficiency in English?

• Where on the 6-year journey from low to high proficiency are students you work with? How might this impact their ability to access your curricula? 

• What am I currently doing to support my EAL learners? How effective is this? What do I need in order to bring them on further?

If anyone would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Bitesize Research: Collective Teacher Efficacy

This week, I wanted to share with you some of Hattie’s work. Many of you will be familiar with Hattie’s work, but in summary, Hattie has led a project entitled ‘Visible Learning’ which strives to use meta-analyses to determine the strands of T&L with the largest effective sizes on student attainment and progress.

Objectives: To understand the T&L strategies that have the highest impact on student attainment and progress.

Summary:  

• Whilst much of Hattie’s work has centred around feedback, the ‘new number one’ with the largest effective size is termed ‘Collective Teacher Efficacy’ (CTE).

• CTE is broadly:

• A collective belief of a school’s staff that they can positively impact students

• A collective belief of a school’s staff that they should set appropriately high challenging expectations for all students

• Crucially, this belief needs to be continuously underpinned by the evidence of the impact that the school’s staff are making

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

 

• How do I develop this belief with those I work with?

• How do I regularly demonstrate or role model my own belief in this?

• What challenges my ability to have this belief?

• What kinds of evidence can I be using to support the fact that what I am doing is making an impact?

If anyone would like to discuss this further with Jaya - please comment below! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Bitesize Research: Metacognition and Student Progress

This week, with metacognition being a key TTB theme, I wanted to share with you the work of the EEF on metacognition. 

Objectives: To understand the role of metacognition (‘learning to learn’) and self-regulated learning in improving student progress and attainment.

Summary:  

• Metacognitive and self-regulation approaches made a large impact on student attainment - up to 7 months ahead additional progress when compared with their peers. 

• Strategies for metacognition and self-regulation worked best when taught in collaborative groups - i.e. when students could make their thought processes clear through discussion. 

• There is particularly strong evidence that teaching metacognitive and self-regulation strategies to low-achieving older students is especially effective.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

 

• Which explicit strategies can you teach your pupils to help them plan, monitor, and evaluate specific aspects of their learning? How do these specifically look in your subject? 

• How can you promote, model and develop metacognitive talk related to your lesson objectives? 

If anyone would like to discuss this further with me - please comment below! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Bitesize Research: Teacher Leadership and Student Achievement - what's the deal?

In the fourth week in T3, when we are looking at leadership values for T&L evaluation, I wanted to share with you a meta-analysis from the Educational Research Review about the association of teacher leadership and student achievement, published in November 2020.

Objectives: There is a lot of literature around teacher leadership. However, unlike most of the existing literature, this analysis seeks to establish an empirical basis for whether or not teacher leadership impacts student achievement. For this analysis, teacher leadership is defined as those who maintain normal classroom responsibilities as well as assuming leadership responsibilities outside of the classroom. This can be formally (by way of a leadership post) or informally (demonstrating those leadership behaviours). 

Summary:  

• Overall, there is a small positive correlation between teacher leadership and student achievement.

• There appears to be a slightly higher impact of teacher leadership on Maths achievement, rather than reading achievement, although both are positively impacted.

• Teachers involved with curriculum, instruction (classroom pedagogy) and assessment decisions demonstrated the strongest relationships with student achievement. 

• This meta-analysis uses some studies with small sample sizes. This suggests that whilst this is a good start, further work to show the empirical basis for the relationship between teacher leadership and student achievement needs to be conducted.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

 

• How do I show leadership as a teacher, either formally or informally? What are my areas of strength, and areas for development?

• What does curriculum, instruction and assessment leadership involve? How do leaders in these areas think and make decisions? How can I show these leadership qualities?

If anyone would like to discuss this further with Jaya - please do comment below! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Bitesize Research: The KS3 Years and Disadvantaged Children

The third week in T3, I wanted to share with you the work of the Nuffield Foundation on disadvantage in early secondary education (KS3 in the traditional sense of YR7 to YR9) published in December 2020.

Objectives: To examine what, if any, impact the KS3 years have on attainment and progress for disadvantaged children. They looked at lots of factors, but most notably ones connected to family income and attendance.

Summary:  

• There is significant evidence to suggest that a number of educational inequalities widen between disadvantaged children and their peers across KS3. This includes attendance, attainment and progress worsening for disadvantaged children across KS3.

• The gaps in students’ self-reported outcomes also widen, particularly pertaining to attitudes towards school, perception of academic ability, aspirations for careers and further education.

• Identifying and supporting higher prior attaining disadvantage students on entry to secondary school made a difference in creating higher GCSE attainment 

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

 

• Do I know who my disadvantaged students in KS3 are? Do I know who my higher prior attaining disadvantaged students in KS3 are too? If not, how do I find this out?

• How can we support KS3 students to mitigate against some of these widening inequalities from YR7-9?

• How can we work to improve student self-perception across KS3? What has worked well? What could we try differently?

If anyone would like to discuss this further with Jaya - please do comment below! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.