In the late 1970’s, John Flavell originally coined the word “metacognition.” He defined the word as “cognition about cognitive phenomenon”, or basically thinking about thinking.
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Definition of MetacognitionSubsequent studies on metacognition described the term comparative to Flavell’s meaning. Cross and Paris (1988)
defined it as “the knowledge and control children have over their own thinking and learning activities.” For Hennessey (1999), metacognition is the “awareness of one’s own thinking, awareness of the content of one’s conception, as active monitoring of one’s cognitive processes, an attempt to regulate one’s cognitive processes in relationship to further learning, and an application of a set of heuristics as an effective device for helping people organize their methods of attacks in
general.” Although the term has been known for a long time, especially in the field of educational psychology, defining metacognition can be difficult. Until now, there are still debates as to what the term exactly means. This confusion can be rooted from the idea that there are terms presently used to characterize the same basic phenomenon, such as self-regulation, executive control, or an aspect of that phenomenon such as meta-memory. These terms are commonly used
interchangeably in literature. While there are some differences between explanations of the term, the role of executive processes in monitoring and regulation of cognitive methods is emphasized. Metacognition and LearningMetacognition denotes in-depth thinking in which cognitive processes involved in learning are actively controlled. This includes planning how to accomplish a given learning task, monitoring understanding, and estimating progress toward the completion
of a task. It is believed that students have greater ability to control goals, dispositions, and attention when they are more aware of their thinking processes as they learn. This means that self-regulation is a result of self-awareness. For instance, when a student is aware of his lack of commitment to write his thesis, and bears the knowledge that he is procrastinating, delaying, and allowing himself to be distracted by other less important things, then he could take action
to get started on doing the task. This is possible only if the student becomes aware of his procrastination and takes control in planning on how to approach his thesis completion. Components of MetacognitionMetacognition is divided into three components:
Metacognitive knowledge refers to the awareness
individuals possess about themselves and other people as cognitive processors. Metacognitive regulation, on the other hand, has to do with people’s control over cognition and learning experiences through a set of methods that help people regulate their learning. Metacognitive experiences involve cognitive efforts that are currently taking place. Types of Metacognitive KnowledgeThe metacognitive knowledge component of metacognition is divided into three different types of knowledge:
Declarative knowledge refers to the factual information that we know, and can both be spoken or written. This is also the knowledge about ourselves as learners and about what factors can influence our performances. Procedural knowledge refers to information on how to do something or how to perform the procedural steps that make up a task. A high degree
of procedural knowledge allows us to perform tasks more automatically through a variety of strategies. Conditional knowledge refers to the knowledge about when to use a procedure, skill, or strategy or when not to. Such knowledge allows us to assign optimal resources for various tasks. Skills in Metacognitive RegulationThere are three important skills in metacognitive regulation:
Planning involves
suitable selection of strategies and the right assignment of resources. Monitoring includes awareness of understanding and task performance, while evaluating refers to the assessment of the final result of a task and the efficiency carried out during task performance. Metacognitive StrategiesResearch has shown that teaching students metacognitive strategies can improve learning. Among the different learning strategies that are commonly used when studying or doing homework are
rote memorization, goal setting, monitoring, self-assessing, and regulating during thinking and writing processes. What are the 3 elements of metacognition?The great majority of theorists would agree in drawing a distinction between three basic aspects of metacognition: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive experiences, and metacognitive control strategies.
What are the 5 components of metacognition?Items were chosen for their relevance to five-theoretical components of metacognition: 1) metacognitive knowledge, 2) monitoring, 3) planning, 4) evaluation, and 5) regulation/control.
What are the different types of metacognition?Metacognition is broken down into three components: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive experience, and metacognitive strategies.
What are the four metacognitive strategies?A metacognitive approach to reading that involves teachers working with small groups of learners and modeling the use of four key strategies: summarising, questioning, clarifying and predicting. The learners are then asked to teach these strategies to other learners.
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