Metacognitive Education: Going Beyond Critical Thinking

Metacognition and Learning, 2010

The study investigated the influence of metacognition on critical thinking skills. It is hypothesized in the study that critical thinking occurs when individuals use their underlying metacognitive skills and strategies that increase the probability of a desirable outcome. The Metacognitive Assessment Inventory (MAI) by Schraw and Dennison (Contemporary Educational Psychology 19:460-475, 1994), which measures regulation of cognition and knowledge of cognition, and the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA) with the factors inference, recognition of assumptions, deduction, interpretations, and evaluation of arguments were administered to 240 college students from different universities in the National Capital Region in the Philippines. The Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) was used to determine the effect of metacognition on critical thinking as latent variables. Two models were tested: (1) In the first model, metacognition is composed of two factors while (2) in the second model, metacognition has eight factors as they affect critical thinking. The results indicated that in both models, metacognition has a significant path to critical thinking, p<.05. The analysis also showed that for both metacognition and critical thinking, all underlying factors are significant. The second model had a better goodness of fit as compared with the first as shown by the RMSEA value and other fit indices.

This paper proposes the construct of metacognition as a potential bridge between the concerns of educators and the concerns of researchers who study cognitive development. In so doing, it highlights, as another bridging construct, the phenomenon of transfer, or, more precisely, the absence of transfer. The difficulty of achieving transfer of learning from one context to another is a problem that cognitive development researchers and educational practitioners are both aware of and appreciate as fundamental to their respective concerns. The two constructs are connected, in that a key to transfer lies in metacognition. In inquiry learning research, students display the intra-individual variability in strategy use that microgenetic studies have found to be the norm. Development consists of shifts in the frequencies with which different strategies are chosen for application. To explain developments, it is necessary to turn to the meta-level of functioning. If nothing has been done to inf...

2019

In higher education, there has been a push to strengthen students’ critical thinking skills. Metacognition is a central component of critical thinking and research has indicated that students who use metacognitive strategies tend to become better critical thinkers and academically successful students. Though the merits of metacognition are known, relatively less research has been conducted on the effectiveness of pedagogical practices intended to improve students’ metacognitive skills and abilities. The overarching agenda guiding this study is to contribute to research that improves students’ critical thinking; the specific focus is on the effectiveness of metacognitive pedagogy on students’ self-reported use of metacognitive strategies. In a quasi-experimental two-group research design, 392 undergraduate students received metacognitive pedagogy and worked with metacognitive strategies while completing a 16-week undergraduate course in sexuality studies. Students in Group A received...

IntechOpen eBooks, 2024

Metacognitive skills help students develop skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, leadership, and responsibility. This chapter aims to examine the concepts of cognition, metacognition, metacognitive strategy, and metacognitive skill within a theoretical framework and to reveal the place of these concepts in education. In the research literature review method was used. In the light of the results obtained based on the research findings, it was determined that metacognitive strategies help students improve their cognitive skills during the learning process and are related to academic success. This research reveals the need to emphasize the importance and place of metacognitive skills in education, to teach students strategies, and to guide them when and where to use them. Additionally, students need to gain appropriate experiences and practice to develop their metacognitive skills. Metacognitive development begins at an early age and continues throughout the teaching process; therefore, it is very essential to carry out activities that support metacognition, especially at preschool and primary school levels. The general conclusion is that developing metacognitive skills increases students' cognitive competencies and makes them responsible for their learning, which in turn enables students to become more independent learners and increases their overall academic success.

Jyotirmay Research Journal of Education, 2024

Metacognition, the ability to think about one's own thinking processes, has been widely recognized as a critical component of effective learning and academic success. This research paper examines the role of metacognition in teaching and learning, with a focus on practical strategies for enhancing students' metacognitive skills. Drawing on a review of the empirical literature, the paper discusses evidence-based instructional approaches that promote metacognitive thinking in primary and secondary student populations. It highlights the key components of metacognition, including planning one's learning activities, monitoring one's understanding and progress, and evaluating the effectiveness of one's learning strategies. The paper explores how teachers can intentionally incorporate metacognitive strategies into their pedagogy to support students' development as independent, self-regulated learners who are actively engaged in understanding and improving their own thinking and learning processes.

International journal of multidisciplinary and current research, 2014

Metacognition refers to “thinking about thinking” or our ability to know what we know, what we don’t know and how to regulate as well as control such thinking. This article seeks to give an overview of some issues related to metacognition, a construct which received a considerable attention on the part of teaching theoreticians and researchers. It starts with a brief introduction of metacognition and then gives an account of its various definitions and components. The differences between cognition and metacognition are also mentioned. It concludes with some ideas and research findings on the teachability of this construct in different fields of study, especially language education.

Metacognition and Learning, 2010

We know that metacognitive students are successful in school (Sternberg Instructional Science 26:127-140, 1998). However, despite the recognition of the role of metacognition in student success, limited research has been done to explore teachers' explicit awareness of their metacognition and their ability to think about, talk about, and write about their thinking (Zohar Teaching and Teacher Education 15:413-429, 1999). Therefore, the current study investigates teachers' understanding of metacognition and their pedagogical understanding of metacognition, and the nature of what it means to teach students to be metacognitive. One hundred-five graduate students in education participated in this study. The data analysis results, using mixed research method, suggest that the participant's metacognitive knowledge had a significant impact on his/her pedagogical understanding of metacognition. The results revealed that teachers who have a rich understanding of metacognition report that teaching students to be metacognitive requires a complex understanding of both the concept of metacognition and metacognitive thinking strategies.

Pegem Eğitim ve Öğretim Dergisi, 2015

The present study investigated the effect of metacognitive guidance in an online learning environment on the students&#39; critical thinking competency. The research was carried out using experimental design with pretest-posttest control groups. The research group of the study consisted of 60 students studying at Computer and Educational Teaching Department of Educational Sciences Faculty at Ankara University during the fall semester of 2011-2012. The 51 point California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory was used to collect pretest-posttest data. In terms of total score of critical thinking tendency, the average score of the group that received critical guidance was found to be higher than the score of the control group. The metacognitive guidance offered to the students in the online learning environment has affected their critical thinking tendency in a positive way. Findings indicate that metacognitive guidance in online learning environments can be an effective tool in dev...

During his time, Flavell (1979) identified the metacognitive process and described it with the transitive and self-reflective meaning of the verb to think, defining this process as “thinking about thinking”. If we ask ourselves today, “What is metacognition?”, we can recover the past decades of research on the topic and, together with Flavell’s definition, we can understand what “knowledge of a cognition” where “cognition x” can regulate itself and is subject to being monitored, planned, thought and directed towards specific learning tasks. This process is identified using the term metacognition. Therefore, what we call metacognition has given rise to the development of pedagogies focused on this type of strategies, where the learning process is not only a secondary thought, but is subject to regulation and self-evaluation, with systematized precedents in the psychology and epistemology of the 20th century. For example, Polya (1949) presented a framework for understanding, developing and applying the metacognitive processes in four stages: one of them is self-reflection and evaluation of the solution to a problem, in other words, a conscious knowledge that seeks self-examination and that can be reproduced in other unfamiliar learning situations. Mörck (2008) mentions that already in Vigotsky and Piaget we can observe the importance of metacognitive processes in learning; however, Schoenfeld (1985) identified other aspects that were not previously considered and that can influence the metacognitive process, such as the complexity of the affective experience and the socio-emotional aspects implied in the process of learning something.

Recent research highlights the importance of both metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive skills in learning. This chapter reviews some of the recent literature on metacognition in learning and describes some methods of helping students acquire strategic metacognitive knowledge and executive management metacognitive skills to improve their learning. Topics focused on include reading metacognition, graphic organizers, self-assessment, self-questioning, and thinking aloud, all of which can be used across content domains.