#93 Developing Metacognitive Learners

Hi Everyone

Over the course of the last couple of newsletters we’ve been looking more closely at simplifying the concept of ‘metacognition’, in order to promote its development as a potential option for school improvement. What a great way to have a real impact on student progress.

Raising attainment is guaranteed if students learn how to take responsibility for their own learning, and subsequently work more independently. That only becomes a reality when the majority of students become more confident in their own ability, understand what the learning process actually looks like, and appreciate their own role in making academic progress.

That sounds like a bit of a tall order, but is entirely do-able if you ditch the idea of a quick fix, and focus instead on developing metacognition in ALL learners whilst teaching the curriculum. The secret is to ‘naturalise’ the process rather than ‘formalise’ it. That way, taking a more metacognitive approach becomes second nature to learners and starts to be used in all settings as a transferable skill.

Some schools have individual teachers who are passionate about embracing a more inclusive way of supporting all learners to make progress, but impact is limited if they’re working in isolation from the rest of school. If you genuinely want to see all of your learners making academic progress, whilst at the same time improving their mental health, this has to be a whole school approach!

All that’s needed is a slight shift across all classrooms in the relationship between teaching and learning. If you remember we mentioned in a previous issue that some children find it difficult to make the switch from primary learning, (their ‘first’ way of learning pre-school), to the secondary mode required in a formal educational setting.

There’s a massive difference between the natural and instinctive curiosity that results in soaking up information directly from the environment, and being forced to sit still in order to listen and learn from being taught a set curriculum. We never get round to teaching children ‘how’ to learn effectively in this secondary way, and yet expect them to meet a set of standards that many fall short of, because they haven’t made the switch.

Early years learning is achieved subconsciously via inbuilt ‘cognition’, whereas, success in formal educational settings requires the ‘meta’ approach, ie; consciously going beyond the learning itself in order to find a better way achieving the desired result. Notice that it’s the students who need to find a better way for themselves, so we have to shift our focus from what we intend to teach them, to what it is that we want them to learn and how they’re going to learn it.

If we plan on developing metacognition in learners, that means providing a classroom environment that is conducive to students thinking for themselves. So many of us would agree that’s what we really want for all children and young people and yet, the average classroom is not a place where independent thinking is welcomed. Think for a moment about the behaviour and actions that attract praise for instance.

A student can be someone who; is quiet and cooperative, always hands in completed work, presents their work neatly, never questions the teacher or talks out of turn. They receive praise for those qualities, but are not necessarily learning anything. Therefore, if we are constantly praising neatness, completion, staying quiet and not questioning anything, we do not have a metacognitive classroom and learners are not thinking for themselves.

A metacognitive learner on the other hand often enjoys talking through their thinking with a partner, (ie; appears chatty) will ask a lot of questions in an attempt to understand, (ie; appears annoying to the teacher) hands in work that is incomplete because once they have a clear idea of the learning in their heads why would they want to write it down, (ie; appears lazy) and often have lots of crossings out from experimenting with ideas (ie; appears messy). These characteristics are unfortunately those that sometimes attract disciplinary measures, despite all our fine words about metacognition.

So, the first step in becoming a metacognitive school is reviewing staff attitudes towards rewards and sanctions, and for teachers to take on board the need to praise effort, resilience, independent thought, collaboration, and questioning over compliance. We don’t want students to think that their sole purpose in the classroom is to please the teacher, rather than having a real desire to learn which often gets squashed along the way.

We’ll be developing a lot more ideas about how to naturalise metacognition in the classroom through this newsletter, but if in the meantime you’d like to speed up the process, remember that I am still providing one off, CPD days for school staff, to help kickstart a whole school approach. For schools in England, just get in touch for a chat if you’d like a visit.

Plenty more next time.

Warm regards

Liz