Metacognition — in Design and Education

Metacognition

Thinking is cognition. When you ask “how can I think more effectively?” and you think about thinking —
with the objective of improving the quality of your thinking, learning, and performing — this is meta-
cognition, because it's your cognition about cognition.

Cognition-and-Metacognition

These two aspects of thinking are closely related and often overlap, so we can design strategies for
using cognition-and-metacognition together in combinations that are mutually supportive and
synergistically productive. But despite these interactions, sometimes it can be useful to think about the
special characteristics of either cognition or metacognition, and how to more effectively use each. But
even though for simplicity I'll often refer to metacognition, typically the real meaning is a blending of
metacognition-and-cognition.

The Value of Metacognition

Those who study metacognition (educators, psychologists,...) think it can be very useful: "an awareness
of the learning process can improve learning dramatically" (Carleton College), and "the ability to
appropriately allocate cognitive resources... is central to intelligence" (Jennifer Livingston), and
"students who demonstrate a wide range of metacognitive skills perform better on exams and complete
work more efficiently" (Wikipedia).

One of the "three core learning principles" in How People Learn` is metacognition because "Integration
of metacognitive instruction with discipline-based learning can enhance student achievement and
develop in students the ability to learn independently" so "it should be consciously incorporated into
curricula across disciplines and age levels." (page 21)
Metacognitive Strategies — for Design and Education

Here are two related strategies — applied in the contexts of general Design Projects, and special
projects in Personal Education — for using a process of design (and a model of Design Process) to
improve the quality of cognition-and-metacognition and achieve better results:

• metacognitive Coordination Strategies for Design Projects

Design Process` has 10 modes of thinking-and-action, including one to coordinate the process of
design so you can make effective Action-Decisions. How? While you are designing, you observe the
process of design, and evaluate your options for “what to do next” (by considering both urgency and
importance, asking “what is the best use of my time right now?”) so you can make an Action-Decision
and choose an action to do now, which occasionally is a planning of longer-term actions. When you
develop Coordination Strategies to guide you in making decisions about actions, "knowing
the conditions-of-application when a skill (or idea) can be useful" because this conditional
knowledge lets you "find a match between the demands of your current problem-solving situation
(WHAT needs doing now) and your capabilities (HOW to get things done) so you can choose productive
design-actions that will help you solve the problem."

In a process of design, you want effective thinking-and-action within each mode, and beneficial
interactions between modes. For example, a generation of options for a problem-solution can
occur when creative Generation is stimulated (by using metacognitive strategies) in ways that make this
mode more effective, and also when creative Generation is guided (by using critical Evaluation) in a
productive creative-and-critical interaction between the modes of Generation and Evaluation.

• metacognitive Learning Strategies for Personal Education

When anyone, including a student, wants to learn more effectively, they take control of their personal
education` with a proactive problem-solving attitude, trying to "make things better" by improving their
ideas-and-skills knowledge. One valuable component of Personal Education is developing better
cognitive-and-metacognitive Strategies for Learning.

Students can use a process of design to develop-and-apply Strategies for Learning: they choose an area
to improve, and then use a cyclic process of design with evaluative Quality Checks (for learning
strategies) and Quality Controls (for applications of learning strategies) to improve the quality of their
learning, thinking, and performing. These improvements are the direct benefits. An indirect benefit is
that when students use a design process to develop Learning Strategies, they are improving design skills
that they can use for other design projects in many areas of life, because "we use design for almost
everything in life."

Teachers should motivate students to develop-and-apply Strategies for Learning, and help them do this
more effectively. And, using a similar process of design, teachers develop their Strategies for
Teaching. In an effort to improve all of the Learning Activities they use for instruction — which can
include Design Activities in which students do Design-Inquiry and/or Science-Inquiry — teachers use
“external” metacognition (empathetic metacognition)* by “thinking about thinking” while asking
themselves, “what are students thinking? how? why?”, as a basis for then asking “how can I design
instruction that will help students think-and-learn more effectively?” or for making real-time decisions,
during instruction, about guiding students (by asking or answering questions, giving clues,...)
and providing formative feedback. Teachers also develop-and-apply their own personal Strategies for
Learning, and they benefit from the mutually supportive interactions between their Learning Strategies
and Teaching Strategies. / * Although empathetic metacognition (my own term) is not
really metacognition, it's analogous and it can provide some similar benefits.

Metacognitive Knowledge

Your use of metacognition, for Coordination Strategies or Learning Strategies, usually will improve when
you "build a strong foundation of generalized metacognitive knowledge [about persons, tasks,
strategies]... and personally customize this knowledge by ‘knowing yourself’ based on observations of
yourself (as the person) in the context of various tasks using different strategies."

Performing and/or Learning and/or Enjoying

For this section, I recommend first reading the overview-summary and then what is below.

Should you use different thinking-and-actions during a basketball practice and a championship
game? Why? We'll return to these questions later, after looking at the learning-and-performing of
another kind of skill.

A friend became an expert welder` by using a Strategy for Learning. How? He continually improved by
following the wise advice of his teacher, “every time you do a job, do it better than the time
before.” But... this advice can be interpreted-and-applied in different ways, to produce different
attitudes and strategies. Here are some principles for combining short-term and long-term priorities, for
improving the quality of your performing and/or learning:

When you're doing a job that is important (or you're motivated by competitive pride) and you want to
have maximum performance now, you're on-task with a Performance Objective. If your goal is top
performance, you should always focus on quality of thinking-and-action performance in the present,
which sometimes involves metacognitively asking “how can I do it better” and “what have I learned in
the past that will help me now?”

But at other times — when you want maximum learning now so you can have improved
maximum performance later — you are on-task with a Learning Objective (Education Objective) and
you may want to metacognitively ask “what can I learn now that will help me perform better in the
future?” An attitude of “learning from present experience, for the future” is useful for transfers of
learning.

The main difference between these two objectives is the balance between priorities, in wanting
excellent short-term performance now and/or long-term performance with continuing excellence that
improves in the future. Another difference is the balance of focusing on two ways to learn from
experience, by using past learning for the present, and using present learning for the future.

Understanding the distinction between learning and performance is important for effective On-and-
Off Regulation of Metacognition (below) and (above) for Learning Strategies and for closely
related Teaching Strategies that distinguish between the "external metacognition" of evaluation-
based formative feedback (used to help students learn in a classroom, for their education, analogous to
a preparatory basketball practice) and the feedback of summative evaluation (to measure present
performance, as in an important exam, or a competitive basketball game).

For balance and perspective, you'll want to include an Enjoyment Objective, so...

a Total Objective will be a blending of Performance, Education, and Enjoyment. Or, with action-verbs,
you want to perform and/or learn and/or enjoy.

In each "and/or", the AND is a reminder that you can achieve two or more objectives simultaneously,
when you learn well and perform well and enjoy. For example, focusing on peak performance now can
help you learn how to improve performance in the future. The OR is recognition that, at least for
Performing and Learning, sometimes you cannot maximize both, so you must set priorities. A personal
example of a priority-conflict between Present Performance and Future Performance was The Re-
Optimization of My Tennis Backhand when a wise coach persuaded me to accept a short-term
decrease in performance to gain a long-term increase.

Due to the interactions of Performance and/or Learning (with a blend of priorities for each), instead
of Strategies for Learning you may find it more useful to think in terms of Strategies for Performing-
and-Learning or Strategies for Learning-and-Performing.
Regulating Metacognition — On and Off

On by Using Metacognition: Sometimes you'll want to stimulate productivity by using strategies to

improve the quality of your thinking-and-actions, or by deciding what to do next.

Off by Avoiding Metacognition: But at other times, when ideas are flowing smoothly in ways that are
intuitive and spontaneous, usually you should just go with the flow and “let it happen.” When a process
of problem solving (or reading, writing, listening,...) is going well, don’t think about thinking, just
think. By doing this, you allow productive thinking.

On-and-Off by Regulating Metacognition: How can you decide when to use metacognition (to think
about process, plans, and strategies), and when to avoid it so you can focus on what you're doing? If
you increase your general knowledge about principles of cognition-and-metacognition, and
your personal knowledge about yourself in the contexts of various situations, this knowledge (general
and personal) will help you make wise decisions about on-and-off metacognition.

Here are some thoughts about effective regulation of metacognition.

Opportunities for Metacognition: When you're not deeply engaged in a flow of productive thinking-
and-action, this interlude can be a good time to ask “what should I do next, and how?” to coordinate
your actions and stimulate your thinking. For example,

Timings of Preparation-and-Production: While you are writing a paper, you begin an action-
decision` by asking “what should I do now?” Maybe you need to learn more about the topic by
preparing, by doing research to build a stronger foundation of knowledge that will help you generate
ideas worth sharing in your paper. Or maybe you already know enough, and the best use of your time is
to work on writing the paper.

Using Intuition Wisely: At a time when you have options for what to do next, which option-for-action
do you find most emotionally appealing? If you do this action, will you be more motivated to do it
well? Is your feeling an indication that, at an intuitive level, you think this action will be the best use of
your time? Maybe. Or are you taking “an easy way out” by avoiding other actions that you should do,
that might be more productive although less fun? Maybe. If you are procrastinating to avoid a high-
priority project (or part of a project) even though it is urgent and/or important, you should ask “why?”
and design a strategy to Avoid Procrastination and Use Your Time Effectively.
Know Yourself: A key principle of metacognition is developing the valuable metacognitive skill of
knowing yourself (and your situations) well enough to know when to use metacognition, and how to use
it, so it will be optimally beneficial.

Learning and/or Performance: Generally, metacognition tends to be useful for learning, but sometimes
not for performance. And sometimes reducing both cognition and metacognition (except for a “body
awareness” or “situation awareness”) can be useful, especially for skills that are mainly-physical, as in
some situations for art (music, dancing,...) and athletics. I claim that the typical goal of a Learning
Strategy (which can be viewed as a Learning-and-Performing Strategy) is "to improve the quality of
learning, thinking, and performing" because thinking (with some blend of cognition &
metacognition) often is used for learning and performing; but not always.

Skillful Metacognition: In situations where metacognition is unproductive — if there is too much

introspection of the wrong kind with the wrong timing — the difficulty is not metacognition,
it's unskillful metacognition, due to a deficiency in skillfully regulating metacognition.

Skillful Performance

This table shows factors that influence performance:*

Actual Potential Distracting

= –
Performance Performance Interference

Actual Abilities Interference

= –
Performance + Preparation (Distractions)

To increase a level of Actual Performance, you want to increase Potential Performance — which
depends on Abilities (inherited & developed) and Preparation (for the Performance-Situation) —
and decrease Distracting Interference. An effective regulation of metacognition, for a particular
Situation, turns it on (when it will improve Potential Performance) and off (when it would be a
Distracting Interference).

These ideas, and others, are examined more deeply in Optimal Performance: Regulating Cognition-and-
Metacognition to produce better Thinking for Learning, Performing, and/or Enjoying.

* The concept of "Performance = Potential – Interference" comes from "Inner Game" educational
perspectives — begun by Timothy Gallwey (and further developed by John Whitmore,...) who also has
useful insights about Performing-Learning-Enjoying — that eventually will be in the "Optimal
Performance" page.

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