Understanding metacognition and implementing strategies Metacognition is one of the low cost, high impact strategies recommended by the

Sutton Trust, but what does it mean and how can it be applied? I am looking at an American study by William Peirce (Metacognition: Study Strategies, Monitoring and Motivation). Metacognition is a pupils ability to be self-aware, to be self-reflective and possess the skill to be able to apply their thinking coherently and reliably to a particular situation. The pupil who is aware of their procrastination is more able to tackle that procrastination than the pupil who is unaware. Pupils need to possess and understand three kinds of knowledge in order to develop their metacognitive ability: Declarative knowledge: the factual information that a pupil knows; Procedural knowledge: the knowledge of how to do things (the steps that need to be taken); Conditional knowledge: knowledge about when to use a procedure and when not to, what works well in one situation and what procedure is better for another.

Problems pupils may experience if they lack these different kinds of knowledge:

Difficulty knowing how to answer an exam question

Difficulty applying a specific grammar rule

Misunderstanding the correct format of a task

Inability to think in an abstract way

One useful way Peirce explore this is to ask what a pupil does when receiving bad results from a test. Do they lay blame on factors like luck or the difficulty of a question or are they able to state the following: that they did not know enough factual information; that they did not know how to go about answering the question in the right way.

Questions to ask of your pupils: Do your pupils understand a given task? Can your pupils identify the best way to approach or revise for a given task? Can your pupils unpack their success or failure and employ strategies to improve/move forward?

Strategies that you can use: Generate questions and answer them. You may want to explicitly teach Blooms Taxonomy, helping pupils understand exactly what they are asked to do. Without this they may be unable to choose an appropriate procedure to complete the task. Write summaries. This improves comprehension and helps pupils monitor their understanding. Write elaborations. Encourage pupils to make analogies and see relationships between concepts. Use organizing strategies. Mind maps and other organizational charts can all be useful. Exam/controlled coursework debriefing. Pupils need to determine whether declarative, procedural or conditional knowledge was missing. Link lessons with a preview. Provide pupils with a summary of what is happening next; ask them to explain why this route is applicable, how it fits within the course and how it is relevant. Make reading goals clear. Are pupils reading for general/detailed comprehension, reading critically, or reading for insight. Avoid passive listening or note-taking. This means pupils are not using higher order thinking skills. Predict potential test questions. This will improve conditional and procedural knowledge. Connect reading to prior knowledge or past lessons. Identify areas of confusion Give pupils an opportunity to identify confusion and ask them to consider from where this confusion stems.