10. Metacognition and  Self-regulation

Good teaching and learning encourages children and young people to take increasing responsibility for their own learning

The curriculum purposes stress the need to develop the confidence and capacity to learn throughout life. The development of such capacities will be strongly influenced by how children and young people are taught. Learners need to become involved in planning their own learning through discussions about where they have reached and how they can best be supported to achieve future aspirations.

Metacognition, or ‘learning to learn’, can help learners to take greater control of their own learning. Metacognition involves the knowledge that an individual has about the way they and other people think, and knowing when and how to apply skills/strategies to support learning in different situations. It also involves the ability to think strategically and use a structure (for example planning, monitoring and evaluating) to achieve a goal or solve a problem. In order to become capable learners, children and young people need to be able to stand back and observe their own process of learning, and identify how it can be improved. Working with practitioners and peers can help learners to hone their metacognitive skills because collaboration provides them with an opportunity to talk about their thinking processes, compare them with others and refine their learning skills as a result. This makes children and young people active participants in the learning process with an understanding of how to learn and how to create the best conditions for their own learning.

Some learners may require more support, more examples, more practice and so on, but it remains important that, wherever possible, they take responsibility for their own learning and set themselves ambitious goals. The essence of personalised learning lies in interactions between teachers and children and young people and among the children and young people themselves. Such interactions should be characterised by flexibility in approach and responsiveness to emerging needs.

We have a separate site devoted to learner effectiveness which includes metacognition and self-regulation:  Leading My Learning 

This PowerPoint provides an overview of the content of the following bitesize recordings that describe metacognition and self-regulation that combine with oracy in self-regulated learning.  (created by James Mannion for Pembrokeshire schools)