Introduction
Metacognition can simply be phrased as “cognition of cognition”. It is the “knowing of one’s knowing” or the process one uses to assess their learning process. The idea of metacognition was first developed by an American psychologist John H. Flavell in 1979. Flavell assessed the human’s ability to manage, store, retrieve and search information within their memory. He concluded that humans are able to use metacognition mode to acquire knowledge on oral skill, reading, mastery, writing, attention, social interaction and education. It can therefore be said that metacognition involves the process of self-awareness and the ability by individual to assess their own performance and understanding (Schraw, Crippen, & Hartley, 2006). The idea of metacognition is has been used by learners to transfer their field of study or to adapt to the requirement of such study. It enables one to assess themselves and realize what they can easily understand and what they can’t. Metacognitive process enables learners to be conscious of their learning process and the different learning strategies they can use in the process.
Metacognition or self-awareness enables the students to master the most appropriate strategies in the learning process. Through the process of metacognition, a student is able to evaluate their environment to know what they can do to improve their learning process. A student may create a self-awareness that his/her reading process will be better in a library than in the. On the other hand, a student may also know that their ability to master science content is higher than that of mastering art subjects (Schraw, Crippen, & Hartley, 2006). The student will therefore be able to realize what they should study and how they should undertake such studies. A learner who does not appreciate the metacognitive process will continue to perform poorly in their learning process. It is therefore imperative that learner understands the context of their learning process as well as their ability to undertake such learning.
Elements of Metacognitive Engagement
There are two parts that constitutes to the process of metacognition; the knowledge about the cognitive engagement, and the monitoring of the process of cognition. The cognitive knowledge examines the knowledge on one’s cognitive strength and weaknesses. This knowledge includes both the internal factors and the external factors that can affect individual’s cognition. The knowledge can be classified in three main types, the personal knowledge, the knowledge of the task and the knowledge of the strategy to be used in the learning process. The personal knowledge includes an individual’s believe about the nature and the learning process. An individual can believe that studying inside a library is more rewarding than studying inside a hostel. By using this belief, they can develop a reading culture to align with their belief. The task knowledge includes the learner’s ability to comprehend and appreciate the requirements of a given subject. This means that the learner will make their decision depending on the amount of work and talent certain knowledge requires (Lai, 2011). By considering the personal knowledge of the subject matter and all the tasks required in a learning process, the learner will therefore know the kind of strategies which will be most useful to their learning process. Flavell pointed out an individual’s knowledge can interact, this means that one can believe that they can use strategy A instead of B in order to solve problem X instead of problem Y.
Subsequent researches in metacognition have slightly disputed the initial framework of Flavell. They believe that the concept of procedural and declarative knowledge can be used to distinguish the various types of cognitive knowledge. Declarative cognitive knowledge is the knowledge of an individual’s self in the perspective of the learning process and what factors they believe may influence their performance. According to Lai, (2011) an individual should do self-appraisal before engaging in a learning process. By so doing, they will be able to reflect about their personal knowledge and answer the personal question “Am I able to do this?” Declarative cognitive knowledge, as used within the reading context, is one’s ability to appreciate the factors that they believe can reading process (Lai, 2011). As a result, they will be able to make an informed decision in the reading process and strategies.
For an individual to obtain procedural knowledge they should be aware and able to manage their cognition, this includes the knowledge of the strategies they intend to use in the learning process. Cognitive conditional knowledge involves the process of evaluating “why” a certain strategy should be used and “when” it should be used. According to Lai, (2011), the development of cognitive knowledge develops slowly as an individual grows. As a young child, the cognitive knowledge is always deficient, and as one grows up their cognitive knowledge also continues to develop. Even though the idea of cognitive knowledge develops as an individual is growing, there are several adults who find it difficult to explain the knowledge of their personal thinking. This therefore means that the cognitive knowledge does not need to be explicit for an individual access it and even use it. The knowledge intrinsically available within an individual and they will make the right learning choices unconscious of the cognitive knowledge.
Another component of metacognition involves the monitoring, evaluating, planning and regulating an individual’s cognition. For an individual to plan for their cognition, they have to identify and select the appropriate strategies that they believe will lead to a better learning process. They should then allocate the required learning resources which will enable them achieve their learning goals. The planning process involves igniting an individual’s background knowledge, setting the goals or learning and budgeting in the time. Monitoring, on the other hand, involves being aware of and attending to various tasks which should be performed. The task should be very comprehensive and should involve self-testing. Finally, there is a need to evaluate and appraise the different regulatory processes and products which are required in the learning process. There is also a need to revisit and revise the goals and strategies to ensure that they are in alignment with the requirement of the learning process (Schunk, 2008).
As individual is monitoring their learning process, they start to develop an experience on the real process of learning. At this point they may decide to continue with the chosen field learning or the chosen strategy, or they may decide to change their choice or strategy. This experience developed in the process of learning can be referred to as “cognitive experience” and may influence and individual to observe instances like “I am not understanding this.” Flavell pointed out that these cognitive experiences can be used as the “quality control” and may influence the leaner’s choice to revise their goals or not. Schunk, (2008) did a research to establish the clusters involved in the mental activities which are inherent in the process of metacognition used in the contexts such as reading comprehension, regulating and monitoring. For one to be aware of their learning experience, they need to recognize responsiveness and information pertaining inaccuracies. In other words, an individual needs to set the goals, paraphrase, undertake self-questioning, use the background knowledge, making corrections as they proceed trying to summarize in the process of reading (Schunk, 2008).
There is a strong relationship between cognitive monitoring and cognitive knowledge. According to Flavell, the process of metacognitive experience can allow one to regulate and monitor their cognition thereby developing and refining their cognitive knowledge. Schunk, (2008) did numerous empirical studies to demonstrate that cognitive regulation is facilitated by cognitive knowledge. He realized that there was a correlation between the cognitive regulation and the cognitive knowledge. The correlation coefficient between the cognitive knowledge and the cognitive regulation was established to be about r = .50. This means that around ¼ of the variance in the cognitive regulation is always attributed to the cognitive knowledge, and the other way round is true (Veenman, Van-Hout & Afflerbach, 2006). Schunk, (2008) realized that the cognitive regulation and the cognitive knowledge can be integrated to form metacognitive theories. He then came up with three metacognitive theories which included tactical theories, informal theories and formal theories. The technical theories come unconsciously without the awareness of an individual. They come as a result of individual experience and interaction with their peers. It is almost impossible to change these theories because they are precisely implicit. Informal theories come when an individual starts to be aware of some aspects of their metacognitive theories. However, at this point they still lack the explicit knowledge for structuring and organizing what they believe about their learning process. These theories are expected to develop and become more sophisticated with time. The final theory is the formal theory which has got highly structured and systematized processes (Schunk, 2008).
Empirical Evidence
The metacognitive experiences of an individual appear and grow with time as they grow from childhood to adulthood. This empirical evidence will focus on the appearance and growth in metacognitive experience of the elementary aged children. The research on Piagetian tradition has shown that young children are not capable of developing formal metacognitive theories. This means that children can never have abstract thoughts. Further researches have indicated that metacognitive ability in children develops latter in their life. Children before the age of 8-10 years, in many cases, have not yet developed their metacognitive skills (Veenman, Van-Hout & Afflerbach, 2006). This means that, at these ages, children experience difficulties in mastering various object making personal decisions on what they best understand and what they don’t. It is almost impossible for children to master their thinking ability to exhibit cognitive regulation and cognitive knowledge. Cognitive planning is also believed to be developing at latter ages of development, approximately at around the ages of 10-14 years (Veenman, Van-Hout & Afflerbach, 2006).
More recent studies have indicated that by the age of 4 years, some children have started to theorize on how they think. At this age, they can use these simple theories to help them regulate their learning processes. Children at this age can use both the verbal and nonverbal metacognitive processes to help them in solving their learning problems. Research by Carruthers, (2009) has shown that children at this age use simple processes of monitoring and planning in order to solve their tasks. At the age of 6 years, children can exhibit some level of accuracy in their cognition process. This is why there are instances of first-grade pupils who are able to evaluate the credibility of their scientific conceptions.
Teaching Metacognition
Several research evidences have shown that metacognition can be taught. One of the common instances where metacognition has been taught is by exposing the students to the curriculum before they start learning. This will increase their awareness to the requirement of the learning process and enable them to strategize learning process (Carruthers, 2009). Before the start of the curriculum, stunts are trained on explicit attention to conditional, procedural and declarative knowledge that they will require in their reading strategies. By prior knowledge of what they are going to learn, students can strategize and plan on their learning process. This is the point where the student will know whether they are able to undertake such learning or they cannot. In other words, the students are able to assess the difficulties of the tasks ahead of them and decide that they are up for the task or not. When they believe that they are up for the task, they will start planning and setting goals, monitoring and evaluating their learning progress in alignment to the goals that they have already set.
Various researchers have provided numerous recommendations in instructional approaches which should be used in teaching metacognition. For example, most of the researchers have recommended explicit instructions in cognitive regulation and cognitive knowledge should be provided. Carruthers, (2009) recommended that conditional, procedural and declarative knowledge should be explicitly provided to the learners. These training on the strategies should be focus on how to use these strategies, when they are to be used, and the benefits of using these strategies. Every particular strategy should be highlighted so as to motivate the students and to stress on the distinct difference in various strategies.
Other than just providing the students with cognitive knowledge, educators are supposed to help students in developing and establishing their ability to regulate and monitor their cognition. Instruction on how to assess individual cognition should not be delivered in performance level but rather at meta-levels. This means that, the instruction provided should aim at improving individual control and awareness of meta-tasks instead of tasks and procedures (Carruthers, 2009). Students should be exposed to explicit prompts to enable them improve their regulative ability. There should also be checklist and entries for planning, monitoring and evaluation. Questions and sub-questions should also be included and addressed during the process of instruction. Questions and checklists will help the students to become more strategic and systematic during their endeavor to solve the problems. Students who have developed a set of metacognitive questions will have the benchmark in assessing their metacognitive process. The questions should include comprehension questions, connection questions and strategic questions (Carruthers, 2009). Strategic question is important because it helps the student to ponder over the kind of strategy they should appreciate for every given task, and also provide a rationale for their various strategic choices. It is also important to have comprehensive questions because it helps the students to reflect the kind of problem they are facing before they start solving it. Connective questions, on the other hand are meant to help the students to identify the attributes of deep-structured tasks so that they are able to ignite the relevant background knowledge and strategies.
Conclusion
Metacognition is a multifaceted school of knowledge that literally involves “thinking about thinking”. There two components of metacognition: Metacognitive regulation and metacognitive knowledge. Metacognition knowledge involves the monitoring of individual cognition. This may include, planning, monitoring and evaluation to improve the efficiency of individual metacognitive processes. Metacognitive knowledge, on the other hand is the knowledge of an individual as a learner and appreciating the various factors that might affect their performance, knowledge and the knowledge on how to use the metacognitive strategies. Metacognition develops over time as an individual grows. Generally, younger children have less developed metacognitive process as compared to the adults. Metacognition can be instilled in an individual through a learning process. This eventually will affect their choices on the learning strategies and h kind of the subjects they want to major in
References
Carruthers, P. (2009). How we know our own minds: The relationship between mindreading and metacognition. Behavioral and brain sciences, 32(02), 121-138.
Lai, E. R. (2011). Metacognition: A literature review. Retrieved from: images. pearsonassessments. com/images/tmrs/Metacognition_Literature_Review_Final. pdf on July, 17, 2015.
Schraw, G., Crippen, K. J., & Hartley, K. (2006). Promoting self-regulation in science education: Metacognition as part of a broader perspective on learning. Research in Science Education, 36(1-2), 111-139.
Schunk, D. H. (2008). Metacognition, self-regulation, and self-regulated learning: Research recommendations. Educational psychology review, 20(4), 463-467.
Veenman, M. V., Van Hout-Wolters, B. H., & Afflerbach, P. (2006). Metacognition and learning: Conceptual and methodological considerations. Metacognition and learning, 1(1), 3-14.
