Metacognition

The Integration of Metacognition Into Educational Research

Initially, metacognition was studied within the realm of developmental science. John Flavell is credited with first using the term while investigating the cognitive processes of young children. Researchers determined that metacognition develops gradually over the course of life, raising the question of whether metacognitive development, like other similarly developing cognitive skills, including communication and problem solving, could be supplemented by additional teaching.

Scientists next investigated the presence of metacognitive processes in expert populations to determine whether awareness of one’s cognition contributes to attaining higher levels of knowledge and skill. Metacognition was discovered to play a crucial role in the development of adaptive expertise, a term Giyoo Hatano and Kayoko Inagaki used to describe the ability to both excel at tasks previously completed and solve new, unrelated problems. Additional research confirmed that the metacognitive practices exhibited by experts could be taught to novice populations and could contribute to significant gains in learning and problem solving. In the 1990s, committees of both the American Psychological Association and the National Research Council publicly supported the use of metacognitive strategies in educational programs and contributed to the implementation of school reforms that included the addition of metacognitive instruction to the school curriculum. The integration of metacognition into theories of learning and education has led to increasingly widespread use of metacognitive strategies as an educational tool.

Metacognitive Strategies

In 2012, Kimberly Tanner developed the commonly used guide Promoting Student Metacognition, which outlines a set of metacognitive strategies that help students navigate the process of completing an academic task in biology class. The guide highlights the importance of utilizing two components of metacognition: metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation. Despite the specific subject matter referenced in the guide, Tanner’s strategies have been adapted by educational instructors to fit a variety of academic areas, as they call on the pragmatic application of both metacognitive knowledge and regulation to increase academic performance.