Metacognitive self-reflection

Metacognition is typically referred to as “thinking about thinking” or “thinking about learning.”

Metacognition refers to people’s abilities to predict their performances on various tasks… and to monitor their current levels of mastery and understanding… Teaching practices congruent with a metacognitive approach to learning include those that focus on sense-making, self-assessment, and reflection on what worked and what needs improving. These practices have been shown to increase the degree to which students transfer their learning to new settings and events. (National Research Council, 2000)

Metacognitive self-reflection is a kind of critical reflection in which students:

• describe their own learning process,
• monitor their own learning strategies and attitudes, and
• manage or even adjust those strategies and attitudes.

Other kinds of critical reflection may question the content, concepts, or activities of learning, knowledge, or science, but metacognitive self-reflection exercises highlight one’s own relationship to these. In that way, metacognitive reflection supports other kinds of critical reflection. This means that students are invited to consider which content or activities helped them learn, how they ‘made sense’ of what they were learning, and the obstacles and emotions they encountered. When self-reflective activities are encouraged throughout or highlighted within a course, students may build on or improve their metacognitive skills. Studies have suggested this positive outcome even for intellectually or emotionally challenging topics like racism (Chick et al., 2009).

Teachers can encourage development of metacognitive skills to help train more self-directed, self-aware learners who are better able to transfer their learning to new topics and endeavors.

Metacognitive reflection should be authentically related to the content and contexts of the material and experiences in the course. This way, it can support varied learning objectives and competences, through encouraging students to acknowledge and articulate their learning and thinking –their strengths and their challenges.

Overall, metacognitive reflection is often overlapping with other kinds of critical reflection including the “reflective observation” and “abstract conceptualization” in Kolb’s Learning Cycle, “bridge building” in Co-constructed Developmental Teaching Theory and “examining experience” in the DEAL model of reflection. For Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) revised Bloom’s taxonomy, “metacognitive” is the most abstract type of knowledge in learning. Within this type of knowledge are the sub-types of: 1) strategic knowledge, 2) knowledge about cognitive tasks (including appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge) and 3) self-knowledge. In Marzano and Kendall’s (2007) taxonomy, metacognition is an entire category of educational objectives.

No matter the model of learning, metacognition and reflection are thus an integral phase to consider. By explicitly and intentionally giving space for metacognitive self-reflection in university classrooms, instructors can better support lifelong, transferable learning, in all course types and for all disciplines.

Types of Courses

While the following learning objectives are neither exhaustive nor comprehensive for the types of courses listed, they are a starting point for thinking about how to productively integrate metacognitive reflection into your courses:

Different Fields

While this technique is probably most frequently employed in the humanities and social sciences, metacognitive self-reflection can be useful for students studying any subject, including mathematics and hard sciences. The literature on teaching and learning is rich with examples of how metacognitive skills can be built in courses from varied subjects such as biology (Tanner, 2012), philosophy (Concepción, 2004), and many more (e.g. psychology, literature and geography in Chick et al., 2009).

See the Metacognitive Self-Reflection Annotated Bibliography for the above resources and others.

Fostering Self-directed Learners

One of the most valuable competences is that metacognitive strategies help students to become self-directed learners (Ambrose et al., 2010). For those of us who believe that much of the specific information that students learn at university will likely fade, the most important learning outcome we can encourage in students is ‘learning to learn.’ Thus, when faced with new contexts, changing labor markets, and everything else we cannot predict, our students will be critical, adaptable, and up to the challenge.

Resources: What do you need to implement it?

You need only the time and the willingness to become familiar with the principles of metacognitive self-reflection and to make space for the activities in your classroom and courses.

A strength of this student-centered classroom technique is that there are comparatively few barriers to implementing these practices, some of which you probably have already heard of or may already be using in your courses to some extent.

Principles: How can we do metacognitive self-reflection well?

We have all been asked to reflect on anything from the completion of our higher degrees to the customer service experience with a company. Students have probably encountered self-reflection exercises by the time they reach you, some of which were likely thoughtlessly designed –the chief offenders being standardized course evaluations and one-time retrospective reflections on a project or paper.

So, how can we design our exercises and our courses to actually train and encourage students to practice metacognitive self-reflection? I’ve curated some principles and techniques for you as a reference guide, gleaned from a literature review and my own experiences with employing these techniques in the classroom. I would love to hear what else you think is important, and which successes and challenges you’ve had in your own classroom.

Contexts: What do I need to take into account when implementing this technique?

• Classroom size, class length
  • Will you have time to implement these exercises in class?
  • How many of them will you be able to read or listen to? Will you respond individually to students’ responses? Will you summarize student responses in class?
• Teacher workload
  • To what extent will you be able to provide responses or feedback to student metacognitive reflective exercises?
  • Will you assess students’ responses in some way?
• A plan for the entire course is the best way to scaffold and support building metacognitive skills in students.

Next Steps

Do you still have questions about how metacognitive self-reflection might be useful to your students or how it may be implemented in your classroom?

Check out the Metacognitive Self-Reflection FAQ or the Metacognitive Self-Reflection Annotated Bibliography.

Ready to plan the reflective assignments or prompts for your course?

The page on Planning and Assessing Metacognitive Self-Reflection in Courses contains a course plan and sample prompts for inspiration!

Would you like to introduce and/or further explore this technique with your colleagues?

See this Metacognitive Self-reflection Teacher Workshop Kit and start the conversation!