Metacognition

Overview and Introduction: The WHAT and WHO

Metacognition can simply be defined as thinking about the contents and processes of one’s own mind. Thinking about thinking. Within learning sciences and education research, metacognition refers to “knowledge, awareness, and control of one’s own learning” (Baird, 1990, p. 184).

Metacognitive processes include the ability to plan, monitor, and assess one’s understanding and performance. 

• Planning occurs prior to a cognitive event when the learner estimates the knowledge and skills they will need to successfully complete a task.
• Monitoring occurs during the event when the learner monitors progress and considers whether the strategies being applied might be adapted to improve progress on the task.
• Assessing occurs after the event when the learner retrospectively reflects on a learning event, evaluates how effective their strategy was, and considers how they would approach a similar task in the future (Salomon & Perkins, 1989)

Benefits

While metacognitive abilities may vary across individuals, there is research evidence indicating metacognition is a teachable skill (e.g. Moely et al., 1995, Schraw, 1998). Some of the benefits of metacognition include:

• Student’s have greater awareness or recognition of their limitations in knowledge/skills and know which areas to place greater focus or attention to improve their knowledge/skills.
• Metacognition increases students’ ability to effectively apply strategies to solve cognitive tasks and transfer knowledge/skills to new contexts/tasks (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, p. 12; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Scardamalia et al., 1984; Schoenfeld, 1983, 1985, 1991).
• A student is less susceptible to not being aware of their incompetence and lack insight on how to improve their learning and performance

This concept is particularly useful for instructors who teach courses with extensive problem-solving and/or project-based learning, as students will have ample time to practice and develop their metacognitive skills within these contexts. However, all instructors will benefit from knowing about metacognition and thinking about ways to promote it in their classes.

Rationale and Research: The WHY

Too often we teach students what to think, but not how to think. Metacognition is essential to learning and there is a tremendous value for educators to think about ways to augment metacognitive thinking in their classes.

A large body of research in cognitive psychology, extending back to the mid-1960’s, has demonstrated that metacognition plays an important role in all cognitive tasks including problem-solving, decision-making, and critical thinking (Winne and Azevedo, 2014). Overall, within an engineering education context, metacognition has been found to support students in engaging in the learning process and solving problems in effective ways (Case et al., 2001; Garofalo & Lester, 1985; Schoenfeld, 1992). Engineering students who possess strong metacognitive skills can more readily identify and define problems, mentally represent problems, plan solution procedures, monitor solution progress, and evaluate the final solution (Cunningham et al., 2015). Metacognitive strategies also support one’s ability to navigate the engineering design process and persist through ambiguity and ill-structured problems. Newell and colleagues (2004) reported that metacognition also enhances engineering teams’ performance.