Metacognition

Prof. S. Hartati R. Suradijono, MA; Ph.D.

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 What is METACOGNITION?
HOTS
Bloom Taxonmy
IPT

Components in metacogniton
Metacognition and Intelligence
Metacognition and Self-regulation
Strategies
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 Meta-analysis
Metaphysics

METAKOGNISI

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Metacognition ???
"Metacognition" is one of the latest buzz words in
educational psychology, but what exactly is
metacognition?
Metacognition enables us to be successful learners,
and has been associated with intelligence (e.g.,
Borkowski, Carr, & Pressley, 1987; Sternberg, 1984,
1986a, 1986b).
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What is metacognition?
thinking about thinking
Knowledge and understanding of what we
know and how we think, including the ability
to regulate our thinking as we work on a task

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Why is metacognition important?

...if it happens of its own accord anyway?

Shapes active rather than passive learners

Gives pupils sense of control over learning
Learning how to learn.
Helps to promote deep learning

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Why is metacognition important?

Learning how to learn.
Helps to promote deep learning
A key component of Assessment for Learning
emphasises the childs active role in his/her own learning, in that the
teacher and child agree what the outcomes of the learning should be
and the criteria for judging to what extent the outcomes have been
achievedThis level of involvement in shaping their own learning can
heighten childrens awareness of themselves as learners and
encourage them to take more personal responsibility for, and pride in,
their learning
NCCA, 2007
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Metacognition refers to higher order thinking

which involves active control over the cognitive
processes engaged in learning.
planning how to approach a given learning task
monitoring comprehension, and
evaluating progress toward the completion of a
task.

Metacognition is:
"thinking about thinking.
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HOT (higher order thinking)

Higher order thinking involves a variety of
thinking processes applied to complex
situations and having multiple variables.

Logical thinking
Reflective thinking,
Critical thinking,
Creative thinking
Metacognitive

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The concept of higher order thinking skills (HOTS)

became a major educational agenda item with the
1956 publication of Bloom's taxonomy of educational
objectives.

HOTS

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Blooms Taxonomy

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Blooms Taxonomy
Create
Generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things
Designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing.

Evaluate
Justifying a decision or course of action
Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting, judging

Analyse
Breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships
Comparing, organising, deconstructing, interrogating, finding

Apply
Using information in another familiar situation
Implementing, carrying out, using, executing

Understand
Explaining ideas or concepts
Interpreting, summarising, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining

Remember
Recalling information
Recognising, listing, describing, retrieving, naming, finding

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METACOGNITION
any knowledge or cognitive activity
that takes as its cognitive object, or that
regulates, any aspect of any cognitive
activity (Flavell, 1993)

cognition

METACOGNITION
peoples knowledge of their own information-processing
skills, as well as knowledge about the nature of cognitive
tasks, and about strategies for coping with such tasks.

it also includes executive skills related to monitoring and

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self-regulation of ones owns hartati

cognitive
activities.
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Metacognition
:
awareness and control over
your own thinking behavior

planning, monitoring, and

evaluating

SELF-REFLECTION
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The term "metacognition" is most often

associated with John Flavell, (1979).

active monitoring & consequent regulation

and orchestration of cognitive processes

GOAL /OBJECTIVES
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Thinking about thinking

eg. Reading
knowing what you dont know

Awareness of knowing

Key Metacognition:

Selfawareness of ones own

thinking and learning
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I think Im
thinking about
what you mean.

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Play with different combinations of these words and you'll be

forming mental pictures of metacognition.

Thinking about knowing ...

Learning about thinking ...
Control of learning ...
Knowing about knowing ...
Thinking about thinking ...

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Its like arguing with yourself.

Metacognition = Argumentation turn inward.

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Components in Metacognition
John Flavell, (1979): Metacognition
consists of both
metacognitive knowledge and
metacognitive experiences or regulation.

Flavell further divides metacognitive

knowledge into three categories:
knowledge of person variables, task
variables and strategy variables.
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Metacognitive Knowledge (1)

Knowledge of person variables refers to general knowledge
about how human beings learn and process information, as well
as individual knowledge of one's own learning processes.
Knowledge of task variables include knowledge about the
nature of the task as well as the type of processing demands
that it will place upon the individual. Eg. you may be aware that it
will take more time for you to read and comprehend a science
text than it would for you to read and comprehend a novel.
Knowledge about strategy variables include knowledge about
both cognitive and metacognitive strategies, as well as
conditional knowledge about when and where it is appropriate to
use such strategies.
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Flavell acknowledges that

metacognitive knowledge may not be
different from cognitive knowledge. The
distinction lies in how the information
is used.

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 Knowledge is considered to be metacognitive if it is

actively used in a strategic manner to ensure that a goal
is met.
E.g., a student may use knowledge in planning how
to approach a math exam: "I know that I (person
variable) have difficulty with word problems
(task
variable), so I will answer the computational problems
first and save the word problems for last (strategy
variable)."
Simply possessing knowledge about one's cognitive
strengths or weaknesses and the nature of the task
without actively utilizing this information to oversee
learning is not metacognitive.
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Metacognitive experiences (2)

Metacognitive experiences involve the use of
metacognitive strategies or metacognitive regulation
(Brown, 1987).
Metacognitive strategies are sequential processes that
one uses to control cognitive activities, and to ensure
that a cognitive goal (e.g., understanding a text) has
been met. These processes help to regulate and oversee
learning, and consist of planning and monitoring
cognitive activities, as well as checking the outcomes of
those activities.
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 Metacognitive experiences usually precede or follow a

cognitive activity. They often occur when cognitions fail,
such as the recognition that one did not understand what
one just read.

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Metacognition and Intelligence

Cognitive psychologists divide mental phenomena into
cognition and metacognition (Brown, 1978; Flavell, 1979).
processes of monitoring
and control, to which
regular cognitive
processes are executed
in the appropriate order
and according to some
superordinate rules.

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 Metacognition, or the ability to control one's cognitive

processes (self-regulation) has been linked to
intelligence (Borkowski et al., 1987; Brown, 1987;
Sternberg, 1984, 1986a, 1986b).
Sternberg refers to these executive processes as
"metacomponents" in his triarchic theory of intelligence
(Sternberg, 1984,1986a, 1986b).Metacomponents are
executive processes that control other cognitive
components as well as receive feedback from these
components.

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 According to Sternberg, metacomponents are

responsible for "figuring out how to do a particular task or
set of tasks, and then making sure that the task or set of
tasks are done correctly" (Sternberg, 1986b, p. 24).
These executive processes involve planning, evaluating
and monitoring problem-solving activities. Sternberg
maintains that the ability to appropriately allocate
cognitive resources, such as deciding how and when a
given task should be accomplished, is central to
intelligence.

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Ten specific functions from metacomponents:

(1)problem finding,
(2)problem definition,
(3) choice of the set of necessary performance components,
(4) choice of the optimal strategy of composition
of these components,
(5) appropriate mental representation of the problem,
(6) attention deployment,
(7) monitoring of the problem-solving implementation,
(8) feedback reception,
(9) feedback processing, and
(10) practical implementation of feedback information.

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Metacognitive functions usually require at least some

amount of consciousness (e.g., the feeling of knowing),
although there seem to exist processes of monitoring and
control of which we are not fully aware (Moses & Baird,
1999).
Example, we can be aware of feedback information
that is vital for efficient control of our mental as
well as motor actions, although we are usually not
able to know any details of the execution of the
control processes

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Sternberg believes that the proper use of metacomponents is responsible for the adequacy with
which people tackle complex cognitive tasks,
including intelligence tests.
He also formulates the hypothesis that the general
mental ability (g factor) may be explicable in terms of
the general nature of metacomponents, which take
part in every mental activity.

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Empirical studies of the relationships between

metacognition and intelligence belong to two categories:

cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies

(cognitive control).

Cognitive Strategies: a distinctive mode of

dealing with a task or class of tasks.
People are capable of accomplishing various
cognitive tasks using many different tactics.
Strategies are not abilities because, instead of
referring to the betterworse dimension of
intellectual performance, which is typical of
psychometrics, they pertain to the manner in which
cognitive tasks are performed.

There is usually no reason to treat some strategies

as better than others; their choice and use is
therefore a matter of
preference
rather than abilities.
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Metacog. Strategies (Cognitive Control)

processes (that) are responsible for the supervisory
operations, attributed by Allan Baddeley (1986, 1996) to
the central executive part of the working memory system
and by Norman and Shallice (1986) to thesupervisory
attentional system (SAS).
attention deployment, attention switching, updating of
the content of the short-term store, and inhibition of
irrelevant information or unwanted behavioral
tendencies (Miyake&Shah, 1999).

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Metacognitive strategy (cognitive control)

is believed to be crucially important for
execution of the processes that are
resourceful, effortful, and not automatic.
this

mechanism is a natural candidate

for the job of being responsible for the
development of human intelligence.

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 Metacognition is referred to as "thinking about

thinking" and involves overseeing whether a
cognitive goal has been met.
Cognitive strategies are used to help an
individual achieve a particular goal (e.g.,
understanding a text) while metacognitive
strategies are used to ensure that the goal has
been reached (e.g., quizzing oneself to evaluate
one's understanding of that text.
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 Metacognitive and cognitive strategies may

overlap in that the same strategy, such as
questioning, could be regarded as either a
cognitive or a metacognitive strategy
depending on what the purpose for using
that strategy may be.

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 Eg. the use of self-questioning strategy while

reading as a means of obtaining knowledge
(cognitive), or as a way of monitoring what you
have read (metacognitive).
Because cognitive and metacognitive strategies
are closely intertwined and dependent upon
each other, any attempt to examine one without
acknowledging the other would not provide an
adequate picture.
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Cognitive-developmental changes in
the child that allow for metacognitive
acquisitions are:
developing sense of the self as an active
agent and as the causal center of ones own
cognitive activity (internal locus of control).

an increase in planfulness: an individual who

can creates conscious and explicit
representations of the past, present, and the
future

direct practice in
metacognitive activity
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childs
experiences
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Levels of awareness
Tacit use : children make decisions without really
thinking about them

Aware use: children become consciously aware

of a strategy or decision-making process

Strategic use: children organize their thinking by

selecting strategies for decision-making

Reflective use: children reflect on thinking,

before, during and after the process, pondering on
progress and how to improve
(Swartz and Perkins (1989)
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Higher-order cognition
vs.metacognition

Higher-order cognition is information

processing phenomena in which the
metacognitive factors of monitoring and
control play the fundamental role.

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 The study of metacognition includes two broad

components: a knowledge-based component,
and a process-based component.
The knowledge-based component focuses on
information ranging from specific knowledge about
personal learning strategies to more general
knowledge about strategies and their use.
The process-based component emphasizes the
application of knowledge involving self-monitoring and
self-regulation, and use of metacognitive strategies,
Maximum learning outcomes are realized when the
learning includes both knowledge and process
components (Corno, Collins, & Capper, 1982; Jacobs
& Paris, 1987).

metacogntion and self-regulation

only when one becomes aware of his/her
own behaviour, can he/she begin to be
self-regulatory about that behavior

SELF-REGULATION
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 Why are some students more motivated to

learn than others? Why do some students
learn more effectively than others?
The answers to these questions are likely
to be found by combining knowledge in
many fields, for example personality,
cognition, and learning (Boekaerts, 1986).

 Self-regulated learner is "organized,

autonomous, self-motivated, self-monitoring, selfinstructing, (in short), behaves in ways designed to
maximize the efficiency and productivity of the learning
process" (Lindner and Harris,1992).

metacognition,
learning strategies, and
personality variables.

Self-regulated learners:
approach educational tasks with confidence,
diligence, and resourcefulness;
are aware when they know a fact or possess a
skill and when they do not;
proactively seek out information when needed
and take the necessary steps to master it;
find a way to succeed even when they encounter
obstructions;
view learning as a systematic and controllable
process; accept responsibility for their
achievement outcomes;
and monitor the effectiveness of their learning
methods or strategies.

Self-regulated learning strategies

self-evaluation, organization and transformation,
goal setting and planning, information seeking,
record keeping, self-monitoring, environmental
structuring, giving self-consequences,
rehearsing and memorizing, seeking social
assistance, and reviewing. (Zimmerman, 1990)
metacognition, motivation and behavior are
considered to be components of self-regulated
learning.
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 Biggs (1987) defined metacognition as "knowledge

concerning one's own cognitive processes . . . and
the active monitoring and regulation of these
processes" (p. 2). His model combines a student's
motive in approaching a learning task with a
metacognitive strategy to produce a distinct
approach to learning. He recognized three
separate approaches: a surface approach, a deep
approach, and an achieving approach. A surface
approach is usually composed of a surface motive,
which is an attempt to meet minimum institutional
requirements, and a surface strategy, limited to
rote memor- ization of bare essentials.

 A deep approach combines a deep motive, such as

actualizing interest and competence, with a deep
strategy, such as relating information to previous
knowledge. An achieving approach
joins an achieving motive, such as ego enhancement
through good grades, with an achieving strategy, such as
organizing time and work space and regulating
behaviour to that expected of a good student. Both the
deep and achieving approaches are considered to
involve high level uses of metacognition while the
surface approach involves a shallow use of
metacognition.

 When faced with a learning task, students use a learning

strategy that corresponds to their motivation for learning
(Biggs, 1985; Watkins & Hattie, 1992). The first decision
students must make is to recognize which strategy works
best with their motive in approaching the learning task.
Once the learner is aware of what the task demands, he
or she may exercise control over his or her strategic
options. Usually, students adopt a surface approach as
an unthinking and short-term reaction to a learning task
resulting in a strategy characterized as a shallow use of
meta- cognition.

RESEARCH
The use of metacognition appears to be related
to academic achievement and enhanced
learning outcomes (Jacobs & Paris, 1987;
Vermunt, 1987; Wittrock, 1983)
From a developmental perspective, Biggs (1987)
and Bondy (1984) suggested that age varies
directly with capacity to understand and
apply metacognitive knowledge and strategies.
Metacognition does not appear, however, to be
related to gender (Biggs, 1987; Otero, Hopkins
8c Campanario, 1992).

 There appears to be a relationship between

metacognition and certain personality variables
including motivation, locus of control, and selfefficacy (Biggs, 1987; Corno, et al., 1982; Garcia &
Pintrich, 1991).
high levels of motivation, high levels of selfefficacy and an internal locus of control (Harter,
1981; Schneider, Borkowski, Kurtz, & Kerwin, 1986).
intrinsic motivation has been linked to high levels of
self-efficacy and self-esteem (Bandura, 1977;
Johnson, 1979), an internal locus of control (Tzuriel
8c Haywood, 1985) and autonomy or selfdetermination (Clifford, Chou, Mao, Lan, & Kuo,
1990; Garcia & Pintrich, 1991).

METACOG STRATEGIES

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Strategy

How to Use

When to Use What is it for?

Skim/Survey

Search for headings,

highlighted words
previews, summaries

Before you read a

long piece of text

Gives an overview of the

key concepts, helps you to
focus on the important
points

Slow down

Stop, read and think

about information

When information
seems important. If
you realise you
dont understand
what you have just
read.

Improves your focus on

important information.

Activate prior
knowledge

Stop and think about

what you already know
about a topic.

Before you read

something or do an
unfamiliar task.

Makes new information

easier to remember and
allows you to see links
between subjects.
Information is less daunting
if you already know
something about the topic

Fit ideas
together

Relate main ideas to

one another. Look for
themes that connect
the main ideas, or a
conclusion

When thinking
about complex
information, when
deep understanding
is needed.

Once you know how ideas

are related they are easier
to remember than learning
as if they are separate
facts. Also helps to
understand them more
deeply

Draw Diagrams

Identify main ideas,

connect them, classify
ideas, decide which
information is most
important and which is
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supporting

When there is a lot

of factual
information that is
interrelated

Helps to identify main ideas

and organise them into
categories. Reduces
memory load. May be
easier to visualise

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Here are a few other commonly used heuristics, from Polya's 1945 book,
How to Solve It:[2]

If you are having difficulty understanding a

problem, try drawing a picture.
If you can't find a solution, try assuming that
you have a solution and seeing what you can
derive from that ("working backward").
If the problem is abstract, try examining a
concrete example.
Try solving a more general problem first (the
"inventor's paradox": the more ambitious plan
may have more chances of success).

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Planning
What is the nature of the task?
What is my goal?
What kind of information and strategies do I need?
How much time and resources do I need?

Monitoring
Do I have a clear understanding of what I am doing?
Does the task make sense to me?
Am I reaching my goals?
Do I need to make changes?

Evaluating
Have I reached my goal?
What worked?
What didnt work?
Would I do things differently the next time?

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The SQ4R method for reading

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KWL Grids
Metacognition

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What is a concept map?

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What is a concept map?

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thank you

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Commitment
Metacognition is at work in
students who choose to commit
themselves to tasks. In the
words of Paris and Cross (1983)
they align "skill with will"
(Marzano et al., 1988, p. 10).

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Attitudes
Attitudes play an important
role in metacognitive selfcontrol. Successful students
attribute their success to their
own efforts.

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Attention
Conscious control of attention helps
students understand that the level of
attention required for a task varies with
the task and that they can adjust the
focus of their attention accordingly.
This sense of personal control is
related to the efficient performance of
tasks.
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Autonomous regulation: an
inherent part of any knowing act,
unconscious adjustments and fine
tuning of motor actions.

Selfregulatory

Active regulation: trial & error, learner

is engaged in constructing and testing
theories-in-action

(Piaget)
Conscious regulation: involves the
mental formulation of hypotheses
capable of being tested via imaginary
confirmatory evidence or
counterexamples. (Stage of formal
operation)
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No conscious
surveillance

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The child
becomes
capable of
reflecting on his
own actions in
the presence of
the actual event
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Other-regulation to self-regulation: Vygotsky

learning awakens a variety of internal development processes
that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with
people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers. Once
these processes are internalized, they become part of the childs
independent developmental achievement. (Vygotsky)

adult control and guide the childs

activity;
gradually adult and child come to
share the problem solving functions;
finally the adult cedes control to the
child and functions primarily as a
supportive and sympathetic audience

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Developmental
progression
from otherregulation to
self-regulation

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metacognition and executive control

executive
control

Automated processes: fast,

parallel process, not limited by
STM, requires little subject
effort, demand little direct
subject control
Controlled processes:
slow, serial process,
limited by STM
constraints, requires
subject effort, providing
large degree of subject
control

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Helping pupils to evaluate their

own performance

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