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Handout # 6

Metacognitive Skills

Metacognition refers to learners' automatic awareness of their own knowledge and

their ability to understand, control, and manipulate their own cognitive processes.2
Metacognitive skills are important not only in school, but throughout life. For example,
Mumford (1986) says that it is essential that an effective manager be a person who has
learned to learn. He describes this person as one who knows the stages in the process of
learning and understands his or her own preferred approaches to it - a person who can
identify and overcome blocks to learning and can bring learning from off-the-job learning
to on-the-job situations.

As you read this section, do not worry about distinguishing between

metacognitive skills and some of the other terms in this chapter. Metacognition overlaps
heavily with some of these other terms. The terminology simply supplies an additional
useful way to look at thought processes.

Metacognition is a relatively new field, and theorists have not yet settled on
conventional terminology. However, most metacognitive research falls within the
following categories:

1. Metamemory. This refers to the learners' awareness of and knowledge about their
own memory systems and strategies for using their memories effectively.
Metamemory includes (a) awareness of different memory strategies, (b)
knowledge of which strategy to use for a particular memory task, and (c)
knowledge of how to use a given memory strategy most effectively.

2. Metacomprehension. This term refers to the learners' ability to monitor the degree
to which they understand information being communicated to them, to recognize
failures to comprehend, and to employ repair strategies when failures are
identified.

Learners with poor metacomprehension skills often finish reading

passages without even knowing that they have not understood them. On the other
hand, learners who are more adept at metacomprehension will check for
confusion or inconsistency, and undertake a corrective strategy, such as rereading,
relating different parts of the passage to one another, looking for topic sentences
or summary paragraphs, or relating the current information to prior knowledge.
(See Harris et al., 1988; - add more)
3. Self-Regulation. This term refers to the learners' ability to make adjustments in
their own learning processes in response to their perception of feedback regarding
their current status of learning. The concept of self-regulation overlaps heavily
with the preceding two terms; its focus is on the ability of the learners themselves
to monitor their own learning (without external stimuli or persuasion) and to
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maintain the attitudes necessary to invoke and employ these strategies on their
own. To learn most effectively, students should not only understand what
strategies are available and the purposes these strategies will serve, but also
become capable of adequately selecting, employing, monitoring, and evaluating
their use of these strategies. (See Hallahan et al., 1979; Graham & Harris, 1992;
Reid & Harris, 1989, 1993.)

In addition to its obvious cognitive components, metacognition often has

important affective or personality components. For example, an important part of
comprehension is approaching a reading task with the attitude that the topic is important
and worth comprehending. Being aware of the importance of a positive attitude and
deliberately fostering such an attitude is an example of a metacognitive skill.

In the preceding paragraph, metacognition has been described as a conscious

awareness of one's own knowledge and the conscious ability to understand, control, and
manipulate one's own cognitive processes. This is not quite accurate; but it's difficult to
define metacognition more accurately. (It's easier to point out examples of metacognitive
activity than to define what it is.) It would be more accurate to say that metacognitive
strategies are almost always potentially conscious and potentially controllable (Pressley,
Borkowski, & Schneider, 1987). For example, good readers automatically
(unconsciously) employ metacognitive strategies to focus their attention, to derive
meaning, and to make adjustments when something goes wrong. They do not think about
or label these skills while performing them; but if we ask them what they were doing that
was successful, they can usually describe their metacognitive processes accurately. In
addition, when serious problems arise - as when there is a distraction, when they
encounter extremely difficult or contradictory text, or when they have to advise someone
else regarding the same skill - they slow down and become consciously aware of their
metacognitive activity.

While it is occasionally useful to consciously reflect on one's metacognitive

processes and while it useful to make learners aware of these processes while they are
trying to acquire them, these skills become most effective when they become overlearned
and automatic. If these skills were not automatic and unconscious, they would occupy
some of the effort of the working memory; and this would have the result of making
reading, listening, and other cognitive activities less efficient. Therefore, like any other
skill that becomes automatic and requires minimal activity in the working memory,
metacognitive skills work best when they are overlearned and can operate unconsciously.

Learners with good metacognitive skills are able to monitor and direct their own learning
processes. Like many other processes, metacognitive skills are learned by applying
principles from almost every other chapter in this book. When learning a metacognitive
skill, learners typically go through the following steps (Pressley, Borkowski, &
Schneider, 1987):

1. They establish a motivation to learn a metacognitive process. This occurs when

either they themselves or someone else points gives them reason to believe that
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there would be some benefit to knowing how to apply the process. (Motivation is
discussed in chapter 5).

2. They focus their attention on what it is that they or someone else does that is
metacognitively useful. This proper focusing of attention puts the necessary
information into working memory (Chapter 6). Sometimes this focusing of
attention can occur through modeling (Chapter 12), and sometimes it occurs
during personal experience.
3. They talk to themselves about the metacognitive process. This talk can arise
during their interactions with others, but it is their talk to themselves that is
essential. This self talk serves several purposes:
o It enables them to understand and encode the process
o It enables them to practice the process
o It enables them to obtain feedback and to make adjustments regarding
their effective use of the process
o It enables them to transfer the process to new situations beyond those in
which it has already been used
4. Eventually, they begin to use the process without even being aware that they are
doing so.

This process usually represents a high-level implementation of the phases of

learning and instruction described by Gagne and discussed in Chapter 3 of this book.
When teachers intervene to help students develop a metacognitive process, they often use
the scaffolded instruction strategies described in chapter 12. In addition, the techniques of
cooperative learning and peer tutoring (discussed in Chapter 15) often provide
opportunities for students to talk to others about their thought processes; and it is often
the process of formulating thoughts in order to express them to others that leads to
metacognitive development (Piaget, 1964).

Finally, it is interesting to note an important relationship between the higher order

skills of metacognition and the basic or factual skills that may be a part of a specific unit
of instruction. Students typically learn metacognitive skills while they are involved in
learning something else. If they are to do this successfully, it is extremely important that
the learners have overlearned the prerequisite content knowledge for the subject matter
topic being studied. If that prerequisite knowledge has not been mastered to a sufficient
level of automaticity, then the working memory of the learner will be overwhelmed by
the subject matter; and the result will be no time for metacognitive reflection.

For example, when children who have largely mastered the prerequisite skills try
to solve a word problem in arithmetic, they can afford to talk to themselves about what
they are doing, because their working memory is not totally occupied with other
demands. That is, well prepared children will have time for metacognitive practice. On
the other hand, when children who are missing some of these prerequisite skills try to
solve the same problem, their working memory is likely to be totally occupied with a
frantic need to find the basic skills and facts needed to solve the problem. If this is the
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case, they not only have solved the problem less effectively; but they also have little or
no time for practicing or developing metacognitive skills.  

When teachers and parents try to help students, it is important not to do too much
thinking for them. By doing their thinking for the children they wish to help, adults or
knowledgeable peers may make them experts at seeking help, rather than expert thinkers.
On the other hand, by setting tasks at an appropriate level and prompting children to think
about what they are doing as they successfully complete these tasks, adults can help
children become independent and successful thinkers (Biemiller & Meichenbaum, 1992).
In other words, it is often better to say, What should you do next?" and then to prompt the
children as necessary, instead of simply telling them what to do.

The preceding paragraph describes how the intellectual rich get richer and the
poor get poorer. Knowledge of factual information and basic skills provides a foundation
for developing metacognitive skills; and metacognitive skills enable students to master
information and solve problems more easily. If teachers hope to help low-performing
students break out of their intellectual imprisonment, they must find a way to help them
develop both an automatic grasp of basic skills and effective metacognitive skills to
enable self-directed learning.

Misconceptions with regard to specific subject matter were discussed in Chapters

4 and 6. Wittrock (1991) notes that learners' misconceptions about learning-to-learn skills
and about metacognitive strategies are also a critical source of learning problems. For
example, a student who adheres to a belief that the best way to learn scientific concepts is
to repeat the definitions ten times each night before going to bed is not as likely to come
to an understanding of these concepts as a person who has a more effective conception of
how to master these concepts.

Finally, note that a major purpose of this book is to help you develop your
metacognitive skills. In chapter 1 I suggested that you apply various strategies while
reading this book. If you have done so, there is a good chance that by now you
understand the rationale of many of these principles and can see how they contribute to
your own learning. By becoming consciously aware of these strategies and how they
work, you will not only be able to use these principles to teach others more effectively,
you'll also be able to use them to monitor and improve your own thought processes.
That's metacognition!

Footnote:

1. There are numerous definitions and theories of metacognitive skills (e.g., Flavell,
1979; Corno, 1986).

 
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Development of Thinking Skills

Young children possess only the beginnings of metacognitive and cognitive skills.
They are able to direct their attention (the beginning of a metacognitive skill) but they
lack other sophisticated skills needed to integrate higher order thought processes. In
contrast, mature thinkers and strategy users possess a wide variety of higher-order, goal-
specific, monitoring skills, in addition to factual and procedural knowledge to which they
can apply these thinking skills (Brown, Armbruster, & Baker, 1984; Brown, Day, &
Jones, 1983). That is, in addition to having a thorough understanding of a wide range of
strategies, mature learners also know when, where, and how to apply their knowledge and
strategies. They develop these skills by acquiring and overlearning these strategies and
using them in combination with an ever-increasing knowledge about their world. At the
present time knowledge about the development of cognitive and metacognitive skills is
just beginning to develop. As this knowledge expands, one result will be more effective
ways to train thinking skills in classroom settings (Pressley & Levin, 1983a, 1983b;
Pressley, 1986; Pressley, Borkowski, & Schneider, 1987).

Metacognitive and cognitive theory is deeply rooted in constructivism, including the

ideas of Piaget (which were discussed in Chapter 4), and in contemporary insights from
cognitive science and information processing (which were discussed in Chapter 6). One
reason for developmental maturity of formal operational learners is that they are more
skilled than younger learners at using appropriate metacognitive skills to assimilate and
accommodate information. Of course, they have acquired this higher level of
metacognitive skills through a gradual process of assimilation and accommodation as
they progressed from the sensorimotor stage to the stage of formal operations.

Throughout their lives, successful thinkers (including most of the readers of this
book) have developed numerous thinking skills. In most cases they have accomplished
this by finding important, interesting things to think about - and then thinking about them.
Effective thinking skills are logically and naturally adaptive; and as long as there are no
obstructions to learning, many learners are able to develop effective skills
"automatically" by thinking about problems at an appropriate level of complexity. Until
recently, little specific attention has been given to instruction in metacognitive or other
thinking skills. However, since a large number of learners &emdash; especially those
who have trouble in school &emdash; rely on ineffective strategies, a greater focus on
how to teach thinking skills would seem to be productive.

If learners are going to use cognitive skills and strategies effectively, they must possess
the following skills (Garner, 1990):

1. They must be able to monitor their cognitive processes. If learners do not notice
that they are not learning, for example, they are not likely to change strategies in
order to learn more effectively.
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2. They must resist using primitive strategies that superficially seem to get the job
done. For example, they must know the difference between a verbatim
restatement of a reading passage and a summary and be willing to engage in the
more strategic process of summarizing information they wish to learn rather than
merely restating it.
3. They must have an adequate knowledge base. That is, they must both have
adequate information about the subject matters and strategies pertinent to that
subject matter and adequate familiarity with the settings in which cognitive
strategies will be used.
4. They must set goals and make attributions that support the use of cognitive
strategies. For example, students with low self-esteem who attribute success and
failure to something other than effort are unlikely to initiate or persist in the use of
cognitive strategies (Borkowski, Carr, & Pressley, 1987).
5. They must transfer thinking strategies to new situations in which they would be
appropriate.

Scaffolded Instruction
A common and effective strategy for helping students develop their higher
order thinking skills is scaffolding. My own first exposure to scaffolding in
education came when I was attending a high school where there was some
construction in progress. The workers had erected a series of temporary
structures (called scaffolding), which permitted the workers to carry out their
work in high places. When the work was finished, the scaffolding was
removed. The term scaffolding has been developed as a useful metaphor for an
effective method for helping students develop their thinking skills. The teacher,
the textual materials, or other students provide temporary support (like
scaffolding in the construction industry) to help students bridge the gap
between their current abilities and the intended goal. Scaffolds can be tools,
such as written guidelines or cue cards, or techniques, such as modeling or
prompting by the teacher. Like the physical structures supporting construction
around my high school, instructional scaffolding is temporary and adjustable.
As students demonstrate greater proficiency on their own, the scaffolding is
gradually removed. Table 12.3 summarizes the steps included in a typical
scaffolding strategy (Rosenshine & Meister, 1992).

Table 12.3.
Steps in Scaffolded Instruction of Thinking Skills (Based on Rosenshine &
Meister, 1992).
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1. Present the new cognitive strategy

a. Introduce the concrete prompt.

b. Model the skill.

c. Think out loud while you or the students make decisions.

2. Regulate difficulty during guided practice.

a. Start with simplified material and gradually increase the complexity of the
task.

b. Complete part of the task for the student.

c. Provide cue cards.

d. Present the material in small steps.

e. Anticipate student errors and areas of difficulty and have supplemental

lessons and prompts ready.

3. Provide varying contexts for student practice.

a. Provide teacher-led practice.

b. Engage in reciprocal teaching.

c. Have students work in small groups.

4. Provide feedback.

a. Offer teacher-led feedback.

b. Provide checklists.
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c. Provide models of expert work.

5. Increase student responsibility.

a. Diminish prompts and models.

b. Gradually increase complexity and difficulty of material.

c. Diminish student support.

d. Practice consolidation - putting all the steps together.

e. Check for student mastery.

6. Provide independent practice.

a. Provide extensive practice.

b. Facilitate application to new situations.

As Table 12.3 shows, the teacher typically begins the scaffolding process by
communicating to the students the nature of a strategy that will be effective for
a particular purpose. (This strategy is likely to be one of the skills described
earlier in this chapter.) Good ways to introduce a strategy to students include
demonstrating or explaining a prompt, modeling the skill, or thinking aloud
while performing a task that applies the strategy. Various writers have
developed prompts that are useful for particular thinking skills, such as
summarizing (Taylor, 1985), asking questions to promote reading
comprehension (King, 1991), solving difficult problems in mathematics
(Schoenfeld, 1985), and planning a composition (Scardamalia, Bereiter, and
Steinbach, 1984).
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The next step is for the student to practice the strategy while the teacher
manages the level of difficulty. For example, to teach a five-step thinking
strategy, the teacher might try any of the following methods:

1. Begin by modeling all but the final step in the application of the strategy,
and then gradually requiring the student to perform more of these steps.

2. Ask the student to name each step for the teacher to model.
3. Provide cue cards to prompt the student to perform each step.
4. Start with easy problems to which the strategy can be applied and then
move to more difficult problems.

The idea is to provide the support necessary to enable the student to meet with
continuous success.

The third step is to vary the context in which the student can practice the
strategy. As Table 12.3 indicates, three basic contexts are (1) teacher-led
practice, (2) reciprocal teaching, and (3) small group sessions. An important
component of these practice sessions is the opportunity for the students to
verbalize what they are doing. It is more likely that students will generalize
strategies if they are able to label the steps; this will enable them to encode the
information about the strategy in a more meaningful manner and thereby enable
the learner to retrieve it more easily for later applications. In addition,
verbalizing the information often exposes misconceptions and enables the
students to expand the limits of their understanding of the process. In addition
to varying the audience with whom the learner practices a strategy, it is useful
to vary the content of the problems, so that the learner masters a general
thinking strategy rather than a mere algorithm for solving a specific type of
problem.

The fourth step is to provide feedback. This feedback can come from the
teacher and from other students; but it is also useful to enable the students to
give feedback to themselves by realizing that a strategy has been effective. One
good way to stimulate self-reinforcement is to have the students use checklists
to evaluate their own performance. Another possibility is to provide expert
models; for example, after asking a set of questions about a reading passage,
the student could compare this set to those developed by the textbook author or
by the teacher.

There are several crucial features in effective scaffolded instruction:

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1. As students become increasingly proficient at a strategy, it is important

to increase student responsibility for its successful application
(Greenfield, 1984). For example, the teacher may reduce prompts or
provide more difficult problems. The teacher shifts from the role of a
coach to the role of a sympathetic audience (Palinscar and Brown, 1984).
The active role of the teacher diminishes as that of the student increases.

2. It is important to avoid simply making the task easier. The idea is to give
the learner increasing responsibility for performing an important task -
not to alter or water down the ultimate task so that the child can appear
to be successful.
3. Scaffolding should help the learner accomplish a goal beyond simply
imitating the activity of the skilled partner. That is, the learner should
come to a solid understanding or demonstrate attainment of skills at the
higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy (discussed in Chapter 3).
4. Finally, it is important to provide opportunities for independent practice
and generalization. It is necessary for the learner to develop an intuitive
insight regarding when it is appropriate to apply the strategy. Teachers
can supply guidance with the "Remember when... Now Let's" Rule:
"Remember when we asked questions and summarized in our reading
class. Now let's try that here in social studies class. What should we do
first?"

The preceding paragraphs have described a narrow range of examples of

scaffolding. There are many other approaches to scaffolding. Reciprocal
teaching (described in the Reading section of Chapter 16) is one way to provide
scaffolding of such thinking skills as summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and
predicting (Palinscar & Brown, 1984). In addition, Pressley et al. (1992)
recommend a strategy in which the scaffolding includes significantly more
direct instruction by the teacher. Also note that scaffolding often occurs in
natural settings. Vygotsky (1978) has pointed out that children often first
experience a set of cognitive activities in the presence of experts (parents,
peers, or coaches), and only gradually learn to perform these activities by
themselves.

Cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989) is a strategy that

uses scaffolding to teach complex cognitive skills. The metaphor is that skills
in such areas as language and mathematics can be learned in much the same
way that young apprentices would learn skills of various trades from a master
at that craft.
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