What is metacognition?

Metacognition – thinking about the way we think – is becoming one of the most popular teaching and learning approaches in schools

Metacognition is often defined as “thinking about thinking”. In education, it’s seen as one of the three components of self-regulated learning and it involves encouraging pupils to think explicitly about their own learning.

The term was introduced in 1976 by US developmental psychologist John Flavell, who viewed it as “learners’ knowledge of their own cognition” - defining it as “knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena”.

Metacognition has gained traction in classrooms around the world in the past decade.

The EEF view: what does the research say?

Metacognition is fast becoming one of the most popular teaching and learning approaches in English schools. In our Teaching and Learning Toolkit, it’s rated as “high impact for very low cost”, with a range of evidence telling us that developing these skills in our pupils can lead to learning gains.

Encouragingly, the research also suggests that disadvantaged pupils can benefit most from effective metacognition teaching. Clearly, it’s worth spending time looking at how to do this well.

However, beyond a simple definition of “learning to learn”, it can be hard to pin down what effective metacognition teaching looks like in the classroom. To have the desired impact on pupil progress, it’s crucial that teachers and school leaders are guided by pointers from the research base when deciding how to implement this approach in their setting.

Metacognitive methods require pupils to take on more independence for their learning, which can’t happen without appropriate scaffolding support. Immediately handing over independence to pupils - expecting them to know instinctively how to approach a task metacognitively - is unlikely to have the desired impact.

Instead, teachers need to explicitly teach strategies to help pupils plan, monitor and evaluate specific aspects of their learning. This can be particularly effective when applied to challenging, curriculum-related tasks.

Teachers can also help by modelling their own thought processes, alongside promoting and developing metacognitive talk related to lesson objectives.

With explicit teaching and specific feedback, all pupils are more likely to use metacognitive strategies independently and habitually, helping them to manage their own learning and overcome challenges with increased resilience in the future.

How does metacognition work in the classroom?

Teaching metacognitive strategies doesn’t need to be complicated, says Dr Kirstin Mulholland, a lecturer in education at Northumbria University. In April 2021, she shared three simple strategies that can be used in any classroom.

The first is to “talk more about less”: here, teachers should try considering fewer questions or tasks during a lesson but talking about these in significantly greater depth. Talking about ideas in detail means that the thinking taking place in the classroom becomes more visible, helping teachers to spot and address misconceptions.

Next, Mulholland suggests “thinking out loud”. Teachers, she says, should think aloud while modelling writing or reflecting on a passage of text, for example. This will help to broaden children’s understanding of the types of thinking they can draw upon and the strategies that teachers, as more advanced learners, use in our own work.

The final strategy is to “make questions key”, which shifts emphasis from the answer or learning outcome towards the process used to achieve it. Questions like “how do you know?”, “what could you do to improve?”, “what went well, and why?” and “what helped you to be successful today?” encourage children to explain their reasoning.

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