Definitions Metacognition refers to an individuals knowledge awareness

Definitions • Metacognition refers to an individual’s knowledge, awareness, and control of his/her thinking and learning strategies.

Definitions • Metacognition is often described as active monitoring, conscious control, and regulation of learning processes. .

Dimensions • Awareness: – An individual’s character of consciousness about the way he/she learns or constructs knowledge or develops understandings. – For example, I am aware of when I don’t understanding an idea. • Control: – An individual’s self-regulation and executive control of his/her learning process. The individual consciously regulates and manages his/her learning process. – For example, I adjust my thinking to suit different science subjects.

Dimensions • Evaluation: – An individual’s ability to assess the fruitfulness of the learning strategies he/she adopts. It is not about getting right or wrong answers. Rather, it is about strategies that are deemed by the learner to be successful. – For example, I stop from time to check my progress on a learning task. • Planning: – An individual’s awareness of his/her learning process that leads him/her to deliberately plan strategies for learning new information. The individual has a conscious awareness of where to start and where to look for tools to manage his/her learning. – For example, I adjust my plan for a learning task if I am not making the progress I think I should.

Dimensions • Monitoring: – An individual’s ability to keep track of his/her learning process by ensuring that things make sense within the accepted cognitive frameworks. Judging whether understanding is sufficient and search for connections and conflicts with what is already known. – For example, I keep track of my level of thinking when I am trying to learn something that is new for me. • Self-efficacy: – An individual’s self-perceptions of ones’ capacity to learn, and includes how confident an individual is about the effectiveness of his/her learning process and the results of the learning process. It is about an individuals’ awareness of the fruitful nature of his/her learning process and the products thereof. – For example, I know I can master the skills being taught in this course.

Aspects • Metacognitive knowledge about persons: any knowledge or belief a person might have concerning what human beings are like as cognitive processors. • Metacognitive knowledge about tasks: knowledge about the nature of the information on encounters in a cognitive task and about the nature of the task demands. • Metacognitive knowledge about strategies: knowledge about what means or strategies are likely to succeed in achieving cognitive goals.

Aspects • Metacognitive skills of planning: the selection of strategies and procedures and the allocation of resources for performing the task at hand. • Metacognitive skills of monitoring: ongoing awareness and assessment of comprehension, task performance, and progress towards the desired goal. • Metacognitive skills of evaluating: reviewing and assessing task performance, learning processes and learning products. • Metacognitive skills of self-regulating/controlling: the management of cognitive activities during learning, for example, making changes in processes or strategies as a results of monitoring.

Aspects • Metacognitive experiences: experiences that accompany cognitive activities such as feeling of puzzlement and the ‘aha’ one feels when he/she finally understands something

Instruction • • • Explicit instruction Practice and training Metacognitive prompts Teacher-led metacognitive discussions Student-led metacognitive discussions Metacognitive writing Metacognitive modelling Concept mapping and other visual representation ICT use for metacognitive instruction

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