Amor S.

Plaza
BSEd-4

1. Define and explain the word metacognition.

Metacognition is the ability to think about and regulate one’s own thoughts. Teaching
metacognitive strategies can improve learners’ performance at school. This makes it a good,
evidence-based target for intervention.

A simplified definition of metacognition is “thinking about thinking”, but metacognition also

encompasses the regulation of these thoughts – the ability to change them. It is a step further than
simple awareness of thought processes, incorporating the ability to alter thoughts and behaviours.
Explicitly teaching learners strategies for metacognition has been shown to lead to improvements
in attainment.

Encouraging metacognition is therefore a relatively straightforward and cheap way to improve

learning. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) describes metacognition approaches as
having “consistently high levels of impact”, while acknowledging that they can also be a
challenge to implement.

2. Why is metacognition important to a teacher and a learner?

Metacognitive learning allows you to explicitly study a subject. It can be useful in studying
because it often provides a framework for how to learn something. For example, in language
learning. If you have meta-awareness then you know what nouns and verbs and prepositions are
and you can analyze your own writing for mistakes in those areas. Metacognition can also help
you to establish a framework for what strategies help you produce your best learning outcomes -
knowing the how and why of a subject can also be transferred to novel situations.

3. Is prior knowledge essential in developing metacognitive knowledge? Justify your answer.

Prior knowledge has long been considered the most important factor influencing learning and

student achievement. The amount and quality of prior knowledge positively influence
both knowledge acquisition and the capacity to apply higher-order cognitive problem-solving
skills.

B. Creative Work