Effective teachers use metacognitive strategies to help students develop awareness of their own learning, to self-regulate, and to drive and sustain their motivation to learn.
Strategy Overview:
What is it?
Metacognitive strategies empower students to think about their own thinking. Awareness of the learning process enhances control over their own learning. It also enhances personal capacity for self-regulation and managing one’s own motivation for learning. Metacognitive activities can include planning how to approach learning tasks, evaluating progress, and monitoring comprehension.
How effective is it?
Evidence shows teaching metacognitive strategies can substantially improve student learning. Hattie measured the average effect size of metacognitive strategies at 0.69. The Australian Teaching and Learning Toolkit reports an impact equivalent to 8 additional months of progress.
Considerations
Students use metacognitive strategies to make the most of classroom instruction and to extend the learning beyond it. Metacognitive strategies do not directly influence how content knowledge is presented to students. In a sense, teaching metacognitive strategies entails teaching students to teach
themselves.
Metacognitive strategies are taught explicitly, extensively modelled, embedded in routines and the lesson structure, and linked to the content being taught. Most importantly, the advantage of using a metacognitive strategy must be clear to students. These considerations apply to basic cognitive skills like notetaking and summarising, and to self-regulation strategies such as self-questioning and self-consequences.
This strategy is demonstrated when the teacher:
provides students with specific strategies to set goals, and monitor and evaluate their learning progress
assists students to identify and use strategies that support them to achieve learning goals
demonstrates how to use a particular metacognitive strategy in ways that make content knowledge more accessible, malleable and intriguing
uses a variety of learning and assessment strategies to scaffold and personalize the learning process
provides support and scaffolding for tasks through checklists, self-questioning, student-teacher conferences and self-assessment
This strategy is not demonstrated when the teacher:
gives students a choice of activities but does not explain how they can use specific strategies to achieve particular learning goals
does not encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning, or for applying metacognitive strategies.
This strategy is demonstrated when students:
have a repertoire of learning strategies and can select strategies appropriate for the learning goals
reflect on their learning processes, self-assess and acknowledge the impact of effort on achievement
actively seek out feedback because they value it as a way to improve understanding of how they learn
are capable of self-regulation and proactively take control of, and responsibility for, their own learning.
Examples that illustrate the strategy:
Example 1: A Humanities teacher decided to help her students develop metacognitive skills. From the start of the year every lesson included a planned discussion in which students shared the strategies they had used to complete lesson tasks and which strategies were most effective. The benefits of attention to metacognitive strategies were clear from the increasingly articulate manner in which her students explained their thinking processes.
In term two she realised that the metacognitive strategies would be more effective if embedded into learning activities. Her thinking led her to devise a plan for a unit on the Reconciliation Movement in Australia that emphasized metacognitive strategies. The learning goals related to students’ knowledge of the Reconciliation Movement, and to their skills in interpreting and evaluating multiple evidence sources. The teacher selected a range of primary and secondary sources, including videos and transcripts of Prime Minister Keating’s 1992 ‘Redfern Address’ and Prime Minister Rudd’s 2008 ‘Sorry Speech’.
Throughout the unit, she assisted students to describe strategies that supported them to achieve the learning goals, including whole class discussion, small group work, independent research and analysis. She demonstrated the links between particular strategies and productively engaging with the content knowledge.
Students researched government initiatives and policies during the 16 years between both speeches. They speculated on why it took so long to make the ‘Apology to the Stolen Generations’. She scaffolded tasks with self-monitoring checklists and peer feedback. In the final assessment task students acted as journalists covering the ‘Apology’ speech and wrote about its part in the Reconciliation Movement. Students were frequently reminded to think about how to approach learning tasks, evaluate progress, monitor comprehension, and when to redirect effort. Explicitly teaching metacognitive skills supported students to develop self-regulation and proactively take control of, and responsibility for, their own learning.
Example 2: A teacher became increasingly concerned about the difficulties experienced by a group of students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). When the classroom grew louder during on task activities, this group found learning particularly hard. He formulated a goal of supporting them to extend their repertoire of metacognitive strategies and considered a number of possible interventions. The teacher decided to explicitly teach tangible strategies that would enable them to problem solve independently, and to self-regulate in the classroom. The teacher drew on his knowledge about learning and teaching practices that support good learning outcomes for students who have ASD. They learn well when they have opportunities to process information visually, when teachers use language appropriate to their receptive skills, and when they have sufficient time to process the information. Using these learning characteristics to guide the design of an intervention, the teacher scaffolded the self-regulation learning around clear instructions, visual cues and progressively reducing assistance.
When the class was becoming louder, the teacher brought these elements together. He moved towards the students and said, ‘The room is getting loud – you can use your headphones.’ He showed them a photograph of the headphones, prompted them to go where the headphones were located, and assisted them to put on the headphones. After working through this routine several times, prompts and verbal language were slowly reduced and the students began to enact the routine independently. It was apparent they could recognise their sensory triggers and use strategies to overcome them. They were developing metacognitive skills of self-regulation and understanding links between their thoughts, feelings and actions.
Reflecting on the intervention’s effectiveness in a PLC meeting, another teacher commented that a key part in its success was observing what gave rise to the challenging behaviors or sensory meltdowns. Tracking the cause and creatively reducing its influence assisted students to recognize their thought processes and build appropriate self-regulation strategies.
Continuum of Practice:
Emerging
Teachers participate in professional learning to build their knowledge of metacognitive strategies.
Teachers encourage students to be self-reflective learners by assisting them to think about their own thinking and about how they learn.
Teachers emphasize that a person’s ability to learn is not fixed and that it is always possible to learn effective learning strategies that improve performance.
Teachers introduce learning strategies that students can apply to tackle specific tasks.
Evolving
Teachers identify metacognitive strategies as a focus for learning and development in Performance and Development Plans.
Teachers introduce students to a number of differentiated learning strategies they can apply to completing a range of problems.
Teachers explain how to make informed choices about which strategies to use in particular situations to achieve the learning goals.
Teachers teach students how to reflect on and monitor their own learning.
Embedding
Professional Learning Communities support building knowledge and skills in using metacognitive strategies, as referenced in all teacher Performance and Development Plans.
Teachers explicitly teach a number of metacognitive strategies, model their use, and embed them in routines and the lesson structure.
Teachers encourage students to reflect critically on the strategies they use to complete tasks, and to identify which learning strategies are most effective for them.
Teachers support students to consider their learning goals, plan and monitor their own learning, and evaluate their learning.
Excelling
An integrated, whole-school approach to using metacognitive strategies is implemented, accompanied by regular monitoring and evaluation processes that ensure teacher accountability.
Teachers effectively diagnose individual students’ abilities, then select and coach them in appropriately challenging tailored strategies.
Metacognitive strategies are explicitly taught, extensively modelled, embedded in routines and the lesson structure, and linked to the content being taught.
Students take responsibility for their past and future learning – they understand the standards expected of them, set and monitor their own learning goals, and develop strategies for working towards them.
Resources:
AITSL video: Inquiry learning in play spaces www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4BEMQuUk9s
New Pedagogies for Deep Learning – Examples from Victorian schools www.fuse.education.vic.gov.au/Resource/LandingPage?ObjectId=fadaf2dd-1faf-4626-a300-126b09b1951f
Practice Principle 3: Student voice, agency and leadership empower students and build school pride, and Practice Principle 5: Deep learning challenges students to construct and apply new knowledge www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers
Pedagogical Model: Elaborate and Evaluate www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/practice/improve/Pages/pedagogical-model.aspx
Professional practice note 14: using metacognitive strategies to support student self-regulation and empowerment https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/practice/improve/Pages/ppn14.aspx
Education Endowment Foundation report - Metacognition and self-regulated learning www.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/tools/guidance-reports/metacognition-and-self-regulated-learning/
Evidence Base:
Evidence for Learning: Teaching and Learning Toolkit – Australia. http://evidenceforlearning.org.au/the-toolkit/
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Milton Park, UK: Routledge.
Lemov, D. (2015). Teach like a champion 2.0: 62 techniques that put students on the path to college. San Francisco, USA: Jossey-Bass.
Marzano, R. J. (2007). The art and science of teaching: a comprehensive framework for effective instruction. Alexandria, USA: ASCD.
Abrami, P.C., Bernard, R.M., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Surkes, M.A., Tamim, R. and Zhang, D. (2008). ‘Instructional interventions affecting critical thinking skills and dispositions: A stage 1 meta-analysis.’ Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 1102-1134.
Chiu, C.W.T. (1998). ‘Synthesizing metacognitive interventions: What training characteristics can improve reading performance?’ Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, USA, April 13-17, 1998. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED420844.pdf