Are you a science teacher looking to bring metacognition into your work with students aged 11-16?
Metacognition is the cognitive aspect of self-regulated learning; metacognitive pedagogies focus on the planning, monitoring, evaluation and regulation of thought. The UNESCO 'Thinking Without Frontiers' report states that metacognition means thinking about one's thinking processes and states that it “has to do with the active monitoring and regulation of cognitive processes”.
John Flavell (1976), who led studies regarding the concept of metacognition through his research, defining metacognition as follows: “metacognition refers to one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processes and products or anything related to them”; metacognition occurs as a result of one’s individual evaluation and observation of their cognitive behaviour in a learning environment (Ayersman, 1995). In ‘How People Learn, the National Academy of Sciences’ synthesis of decades of research on the science of learning, one of the three key findings of this work is the effectiveness of a “‘metacognitive’ approach to instruction” (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 18).
The following resources will help you bring metacognition into the science classroom with great ease!
Metacognition Tracking Worksheets
A straightforward lesson that introduces metacognition and self-regulated learning!
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References
Ayersman, D. J. (1995). Effects of Knowledge Representation Format and Hypermedia Instruction on Metacognitive Accuracy. Computers in Human Behavior, 11(3-4), 533-555.
Bransford, John D., Brown Ann L., and Cocking Rodney R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Flavell, J. H. (1976). “Metacognitive Aspects of Problem Solving”. In L. Resnick (Ed.). The Nature of Intelligence (pp.231-236). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
