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Metacognitive Learning Skills
Dr. Anuradha Sindhwani** & Dr. Manoj Kumar Sharma*
**Associate Professor in Education, K. M. College of Education, Bhiwani, Haryana,
India
*Assistant Professor in Education, Venkteshwara College of Education,
Rajpur(Sonepat), Haryana, India
Abstract
To become self-directed learners, students must learn to assess the demands of the task, evaluate
their own knowledge and skills, plan their approach, monitor their progress, and adjust their
strategies as needed. Students must be able to accurately reflect on what they do and don't know,
and how they would approach solving new organisation problems. Studies have shown that once
a child is able to come up with his own way of organising items for study, he will achieve far
greater results on tests (in reading, writing, math, science, bilingual education, test prediction,
etc.). It is therefore imperative that effective study skills, with metacognition as the goal, be
taught and monitored to children so that they may become more facile with finding unique
problem-solving strategies in future. Unfortunately, these metacognitive skills tend to fall outside
the content area of most courses, and consequently they are often neglected in instruction.
Key words: metacognitive skills, metamemory, metacomprehension, self-regulation
Metacognitive Skills
Controlling your thinking processes and becoming more aware of your learning is called
metacognition. Metacognition refers to learners' automatic awareness of their own knowledge
and their ability to understand, control, and manipulate their own cognitive processes. It is
"knowledge of one's knowledge, processes, and cognitive and affective states; and the ability to
consciously and deliberately monitor and regulate one's knowledge, processes, and cognitive and
affective states." In more general terms, metacognition is the awareness of the acquisition of
mental organization skills, and the ability to apply these organization and recognition skills.
In the preceding paragraph, metacognition has been described as a conscious awareness
of one's own knowledge and the conscious ability to understand, control, and manipulate one's
own cognitive processes. This is not quite accurate; but it's difficult to define metacognition
more accurately. (It's easier to point out examples of metacognitive activity than to define what it
is.) It would be more accurate to say that metacognitive strategies are almost always potentially
conscious and potentially controllable (Pressley, Borkowski, & Schneider [20], 1987). For
example, good readers automatically (unconsciously) employ metacognitive strategies to focus
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their attention, to derive meaning, and to make adjustments when something goes wrong. They
do not think about or label these skills while performing them; but if we ask them what they were
doing that was successful, they can usually describe their metacognitive processes accurately. In
addition, when serious problems arise - as when there is a distraction, when they encounter
extremely difficult or contradictory text, or when they have to advise someone else regarding the
same skill - they slow down and become consciously aware of their metacognitive activity.
While it is occasionally useful to consciously reflect on one's metacognitive processes
and while it useful to make learners aware of these processes while they are trying to acquire
them, these skills become most effective when they become over-learned and automatic. If these
skills were not automatic and unconscious, they would occupy some of the effort of the working
memory; and this would have the result of making reading, listening, and other cognitive
activities less efficient. Therefore, like any other skill that becomes automatic and requires
minimal activity in the working memory, metacognitive skills work best when they are overlearned and can operate unconsciously.
Learners with good metacognitive skills are able to monitor and direct their own learning
processes. When learning a metacognitive skill, learners typically go through the following steps
(Pressley, Borkowski, & Schneider [20], 1987):
1. They establish a motivation to learn a metacognitive process. This occurs when either
they themselves or someone else points gives them reason to believe that there would be
some benefit to knowing how to apply the process.
2. They focus their attention on what it is that they or someone else does that is
metacognitively useful. This proper focusing of attention puts the necessary information
into working memory. Sometimes this focusing of attention can occur through modeling,
and sometimes it occurs during personal experience.
3. They talk to themselves about the metacognitive process. This talk can arise during their
interactions with others, but it is their talk to themselves that is essential. This self talk
serves several purposes:
o It enables them to understand and encode the process.
o It enables them to practice the process.
o It enables them to obtain feedback and to make adjustments regarding their
effective use of the process.
o It enables them to transfer the process to new situations beyond those in which it
has already been used.
4. Eventually, they begin to use the process without even being aware that they are doing
so.
It is interesting to note an important relationship between the higher order skills of
metacognition and the basic or factual skills that may be a part of a specific unit of instruction.
Students typically learn metacognitive skills while they are involved in learning something else.
If they are to do this successfully, it is extremely important that the learners have over-learned
the prerequisite content knowledge for the subject matter topic being studied. If that prerequisite
knowledge has not been mastered to a sufficient level of automaticity, then the working memory
of the learner will be overwhelmed by the subject matter; and the result will be no time for
metacognitive reflection.
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When teachers and parents try to help students, it is important not to do too much
thinking for them. By doing their thinking for the children they wish to help, adults or
knowledgeable peers may make them experts at seeking help, rather than expert thinkers. On the
other hand, by setting tasks at an appropriate level and prompting children to think about what
they are doing as they successfully complete these tasks, adults can help children become
independent and successful thinkers (Biemiller & Meichenbaum [2], 1992). In other words, it is
often better to say, what should you do next?" and then to prompt the children as necessary,
instead of simply telling them what to do.
Metacognitive skills enable students to master information and solve problems more
easily. If teachers hope to help low-performing students break out of their intellectual
imprisonment, they must find a way to help them develop both an automatic grasp of basic skills
and effective metacognitive skills to enable self-directed learning.
Metacognitive skills are important organizers of all of the tasks that we perform. They
enable planning, setting goals, initiating work, sustaining future-oriented problem solving
activities, monitoring and managing progress on tasks to detect and correct errors, and keeping
track of the effect of one’s behaviour on others. Metacognitive skills make you aware of your
own knowledge, the ability to understand, control and manipulate your own cognitive process. In
short, you learn to learn. It is important to know the process of learning and understanding your
own approach to it.
Students with metacognitive needs are not effective at planning and overseeing their own
work from beginning to end. They might also have difficulty in seeking assistance when they
are unable to start or complete their work or meet deadlines.
The notion of self-efficacy is intrinsic in the acquisition of metacognitive skills. A child
who believes he is "bad at math problems" will be significantly slower in acquiring the ability to
apply new formulae and organize problems in order to solve math problems. A student with little
motivation to attempt to solve the problems will be even less motivated to monitor, realize, and
properly apply techniques to solve problems.
Metacognitive skills are important not only in school, but throughout life. For example,
Mumford [11] (1986) says that it is essential that an effective manager be a person who has
learned to learn. He describes this person as one who knows the stages in the process of learning
and understands his or her own preferred approaches to it - a person who can identify and
overcome blocks to learning and can bring learning from off-the-job learning to on-the-job
situations.
Metacognitive skills have following three components:
Metamemory
Knowing about memory is called metamemory. It refers to the learners' awareness of and
knowledge about their own memory systems and strategies for using their memories effectively.
Metamemory is not linked strongly to other cognitive factors such as intelligence and memory
capacity. Rather, it develops as a function of experience, guided modeling and feedback, and
individual and group reflection. A number of factors play a role in how students learn and
memorize. A learner must have factual knowledge about how his/her memory works by
monitoring his/her memory and understanding its current condition. How well does a learner use
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his memory in stressful or demanding situations? These factors help develop different memory
strategies. The learner must know which strategy to use for a particular memory task. Knowledge
of how to deploy a given memory strategy effectively is also crucial.
Metacomprehension
Metacomprehension is the awareness of and conscious control over one's own understanding
or lack of it. Metacomprehension is being able to monitor your capacity to absorb information
being communicated. Regardless of whether or not students are "doing well" (by whatever
grading scheme we use), they may or may not be aware of their own degree of understanding.
Learners with poor metacomprehension skills often finish reading passages without even
knowing that they have not understood them. On the other hand, learners who are more adept at
metacomprehension will check for confusion or inconsistency, and undertake a corrective
strategy, such as rereading, relating different parts of the passage to one another, looking for
topic sentences or summary paragraphs, or relating the current information to prior knowledge
(Harris et al., 1988) [10].
Self Regulation
Self regulation is having the ability to adjust one’s own learning processes in response to
one’s current status of learning. Self-regulation is being able to monitor one’s own learning and
maintaining the right attitude to invoke and use strategies available. A student must understand
available strategies and their essence in an effort to develop metacognitive skills.
In addition to its obvious cognitive components, metacognition often has important affective
or personality components. For example, an important part of comprehension is approaching a
reading task with the attitude that the topic is important and worth comprehending.
Metamemory Learning
Metamemory, one component of metacognition, is about one’s memory capabilities and
strategies that can aid memory, as well as the processes involved in memory self-monitoring.
This self-awareness of memory has important implications for how people learn and use
memories. When studying, for example, students make judgments of whether they have
successfully learned the assigned material and use these decisions, known as "judgments of
learning", to allocate study time.
Metamemory refers to a person's knowledge about the contents and regulation of
memory. The term originally derives from the work of John H. Flavell [8] in the early 1970s.
Metamemory enables a person to reflect on and monitor his/her memory. In addition,
metamemorial knowledge plays an important role in planning, allocation of cognitive resources,
strategy selection, comprehension monitoring, and evaluation of performance.
This entry begins with a description of the two main structural components of
metamemory - declarative knowledge, which enables a person to evaluate the contents of
memory, and procedural knowledge, which enables a person to monitor and regulate memory
performance.
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Declarative and Procedural Aspects of Metamemory
Most theorists distinguish between declarative and procedural components of
metamemory. The declarative component corresponds to stable knowledge about the contents
and contexts of memory use and includes knowledge of memory's contents, knowledge of
essential intellectual tasks such as reading and problem solving, and conditional knowledge
about why and when strategies are most effective. The procedural component includes
knowledge about procedural skills necessary to manage memory efficiently, including control
processes such as planning and evaluating and monitoring processes such as judgments of
learning. Some theorists, especially those interested in the relationship between metamemory and
social cognition, have proposed a third component, usually referred to as a belief component,
which regulates affect, social cognition, and efficacy judgments of memory performance. The
focus here, however, is on the declarative and procedural components.
3.1.1 The declarative component includes at least three distinct subcomponents: knowledge of
contents and capacity, knowledge of tasks, and conditional knowledge about optimal memory
performance. The content subcomponent enables a person to assess whether he possesses enough
knowledge to meet task demands. The task subcomponent allows a person to determine whether
he fully understands task demands and possesses adequate resources to perform the task. The
conditional knowledge subcomponent, which many view as the most important of the three,
helps a person determine why, when, and where to use a particular strategy or under what
conditions he is most likely to achieve optimal performance. Conditional knowledge plays an
especially important role in self-regulation.
3.1.2 The procedural component includes control and monitoring subcomponents. The control
subcomponent includes regulatory processes such as planning, selection of relevant information,
resource allocation decisions, selection of relevant strategies, and inferencing. The monitoring
subcomponent includes a variety of self-assessment strategies such as ease-of-learning
judgments, judgments of learning prior to beginning a task, feeling-of-knowing judgments made
during learning, and comprehension-monitoring judgments made during or after a task. Most
theories of metamemory assume that control processes directly regulate cognition and
performance, whereas monitoring processes inform the precision of control decisions. Thus,
control processes are at a higher level than monitoring processes, even though both reciprocally
inform one another.
Nelson and Narens [15] proposed a theoretical framework for understanding
metacognition and metamemory. In this framework there are two levels: the object level (for
example, cognition and memory) and the meta level (for example, metacognition and
metamemory). Information flow from the meta level to the object level is called control, and
information flow from the object level to the meta level is called monitoring. Both monitoring
and control processes occur in acquisition, retention, and retrieval. Examples of control
processes are allocating study time and selecting search strategies, and examples of monitoring
processes are learning judgments and feeling of knowing (FOK) judgments.
Judgment of learning
Judgments of learning (JOLs) are metamemory judgments made when knowledge is
acquired. Metamnemonic judgments are based on different sources of information, and target
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information is important for JOLs. Intrinsic cues (based on the target information) and mnemonic
cues (based on previous JOL performance) are especially important for JOLs. Judgment of
learning can be divided into four categories: ease-of-learning judgments, paired-associate JOLs,
ease-of-recognition judgments, and free-recall JOLs.
Ease-of-Learning Judgments: These judgments are made before a study trial. Subjects can
evaluate how much studying will be required to learn the particular information presented to
them (typically cue-target pairs). These judgments can be categorized as pre-acquisition
judgments which are made before the knowledge is stored. Little research addresses this kind of
judgment; however, evidence suggests that JOLs are at least somewhat accurate at predicting
learning rates. Therefore, these judgments occur in advance of learning and allow individuals to
allot study time to the material that they are required to learn.
Paired-Associate Judgment of Learning: These judgments are made at the time of study on cuetarget pairs and are responsible for predicting later memory performance (on cued recall or cued
recognition). One example of paired-associate JOLs is the cue-target JOL, where the subject
determines the retrievability of the target when both the cue and target of the to-be-learned pair
are presented. Another example is the cue-only JOL, where the subject must determine the
retrievability of the target when only the cue is presented at the time of judgment. These two
types of JOLs differ in their accuracy in predicting future performance, and delayed judgments
tend to be more accurate.
Ease-of-Recognition Judgments: This type of JOL predicts the likelihood of future recognition.
Subjects are given a list of words and asked to make judgments concerning their later ability to
recognize these words as old or new in a recognition test. This helps determine their ability to
recognize the words after acquisition.
Free-Recall Judgments of Learning: This type of JOL predicts the likelihood of future freerecall. In this situation, subjects assess a single target item and judge the likelihood of later freerecall. It may appear similar to ease-of-recognition judgments, but it predicts recall instead of
recognition.
Feeling of knowing judgments
Feeling of Knowing example: Even if you can't remember that the song of a movie, you may
feel that you would recall the song if name of movie and actor is known.
Feeling of Knowing (FOK) judgments refer to the feelings an individual has regarding his or
her knowledge for a specific subject, more specifically whether or not that knowledge exists
within memory. These judgments are made either prior to the memory target being found or
following a failed attempt to locate the target. Consequently, FOK judgments focus not on the
actual answer to a question, but instead focus on whether an individual feels that he or she does
or does not know the answer (high and low FOK ratings respectively). FOK judgments can also
be made regarding the likelihood of remembering information later on and have proven to give
fairly accurate indications of future memory. An example of FOK is if you can't remember the
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answer when someone asks you what city you're traveling to, but you feel that you would
recognize the name if you saw it on a map of the country.
Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) is often misconstrued as a FOK judgment. The fundamental
difference between these two occurrences is that an FOK judgment pertains to feelings regarding
the likelihood of recall, while TOT State concerns the timing of recall. If something is on the
TOT, it means that retrieval is imminent. It is important to note that an individual's FOK
judgments are not necessarily accurate.
Knowing that you don't know
When someone asks you a question such as “What is your name?” you automatically
know the answer. However, when someone asks you a question such as “What was the fifth
dinosaur ever discovered?” you also automatically know that you do not know the answer to the
question.
If you were asked what the fifth dinosaur ever discovered was, it is likely that you would
know that you did not know the answer.
Knowing that you don’t know is another aspect of metamemory that enables us to
respond quickly when asked a question that we do not know the answer to. In other words, we
are aware of the fact that we do not know certain information and do not have to go through the
process of trying to find the answer within our memories, because we know the information in
question will never be remembered. One theory as to why this knowledge of not knowing is so
rapidly retrieved is consistent with the cue-familiarity hypothesis. The cue familiarity hypothesis
states that metamemory judgments are made based on the familiarity of the information
presented in the cue. The more familiar the information in the memory cue, the more likely a
person will make the judgment that he or she knows that the target information is in memory.
With regards to knowing that you don’t know, if the memory cue information does not elicit any
familiarity, then a person quickly judges that the information is not stored in memory.
The right ventral prefrontal cortex and the insular cortex are specific to "knowing that
you don’t know", whereas prefrontal regions are generally more specific to the feeling of
knowing. These findings suggest that knowing that you don’t know and feeling of knowing are
two neuroanatomically dissociable features of metamemory. As well, knowing that you don’t
know relies more on cue familiarity than feeling of knowing does.
There are two basic types of "do not know" decisions. First is a slow, low confidence
decision. This occurs when a person has some knowledge relevant to the question asked. This
knowledge is located and evaluated to determine whether the question can be answered based on
what is stored in memory. In this case, the relevant knowledge is not enough to answer the
question. Second, when a person has zero knowledge relevant to a question asked, he or she is
able to produce a rapid response of not knowing. This occurs because the initial search for
information draws a blank and the search stops, thus producing a faster response.
Metacomprehension Learning
Reading is central to school learning, and so children who find learning to read a difficult
process are disadvantaged and disabled in the classroom. Nor do they see reading in positive
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ways. It is a challenge to transform such children into active processors of text and improve their
self-image as readers. Through action research has found that learning metacomprehension
strategies, as one component of a reading program, has helped children experiencing difficulties
to become more effective readers.
Metacomprehension is the awareness of one’s state of reading comprehension. It involves
monitoring understanding and using strategies that support understanding of what is being read.
It is the knowing when the text is not making sense, knowing what you can do to restore
meaning and doing it. The goal of reading is to understand the text, and reading only really
occurs when it is understood. In other words, reading is an active involvement with the text
which results in comprehension. It proceeds by means of unconscious strategic processing until
there is a breakdown in understanding — a comprehension failure. Skilled readers detect this
breakdown, which alerts them to pause and invest in conscious strategies to restore
understanding. This is comprehension monitoring, a metacognitive skill. However, many poor
readers don’t expect a text to make sense and are often not aware when comprehension has
broken down. Unable to monitor their understanding, they can scarcely bring into play strategies
that would help them bring meaning to the text — even if they know some. Ideal self-regulated
monitoring occurs when a reader reads fluently and with understanding until noting a
comprehension failure. This is a cognitive failure (information processing is impaired) but at the
same time a metacognitive success (the reader has noticed the breakdown). The reader remedies
the situation by making use of appropriate strategies. Continuous comprehension monitoring
means successful reading. Teaching metacomprehension strategies to children whose reading is
not meaning-driven will help them to become text participants, one of the roles of the literacy
learner described by Freebody [9] and Luke (1990). It will help them to read more actively and
to see themselves as more successful readers. It will address the ‘I don’t know’ of the
underachieving reader by treating it as ‘I don’t know how’, changing the focus from not being
able to read to one of learning strategies to assist the reading process.
Some Metacomprehension Strategies
The metacomprehension strategies taught can be divided into four groups according to
when they are used, i.e.:
• before reading
• while reading
• after reading
• at the word level.
Before reading strategies
1. Activation of relevant prior knowledge: reading the title, looking at the cover and the
pictures in the text and thinking of what is already known about what they suggest;
predicting what the story might be about; thinking what words (vocabulary) might be in
the story; thinking about what the people/places/animals in the story might be like.
2. Setting a purpose for reading the story: what does the reader want to know? Is there
anything that needs to be done after reading?
3. Asking questions the reader would like to have answered in the story.
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4. Planning how to read the text: looking through the book with attention to text features
such as conversation, chapter headings, and speech bubbles in illustrations and so on.
While reading strategies
1. Seeing whether predictions were right and making new predictions.
2. Answering questions asked before reading and asking and answering more questions.
3. Checking to see if the story is making sense: verbalizing ‘Does that make sense? If it
doesn’t make sense it’s not really reading! Does it sound right?’
4. Silently retelling the main points of the story so far to check that it is being understood.
5. Keeping on thinking about the title and pictures and what is already known about the
things, people and ideas in the story.
6. Rereading or reading ahead if things aren’t making sense.
7. Visualizing what the story describes (making pictures in the mind).
After reading strategies
1. Checking to see if the questions asked before reading have been answered; whether the
purpose for reading was met.
2. Silently retelling the whole story to check whether it was understood and made sense.
3. Thinking about what caused accurate or inaccurate predictions.
4. Thinking how the story linked up with prior knowledge.
5. Thinking how the reader would have reacted if he or she had been in the story.
Self-Regulated Learning
Self-regulation is an integrated learning process, consisting of the development of a set of
constructive behaviors that affect one's learning. These processes are planned and adapted to
support the pursuit of personal goals in changing learning environments. The term self-regulated
learning can be used to describe learning that is guided by metacognition , strategic action
(planning, monitoring, and evaluating personal progress against a standard), and motivation to
learn.
Students at almost any age are capable of taking charge of their own learning. That's what
babies do when they play with their crib mobiles, and that's what you should be doing if you
hope to gain as much as possible from reading this book. However, the fact that almost all people
are capable of self-regulation does not mean that all students actually do take effective charge of
their own learning. Self-regulated learners are cognizant of their academic strengths and
weaknesses, and they have a repertoire of strategies they appropriately apply to tackle the day-today challenges of academic tasks. These learners hold incremental beliefs about intelligence (as
opposed to fixed views of intelligence) and attribute their successes or failures to factors (e.g.,
effort expended on a task, effective use of strategies) within their control. Finally, students who
are self-regulated learners believe that opportunities to take on challenging tasks, practice their
learning, develop a deep understanding of subject matter, and exert effort will give rise to
academic success (Perry et al., 2006) [16]. When faced with a learning task, self-regulated
learners typically do the following:
• They begin by analyzing the task and interpreting task requirements in terms of their
current knowledge and beliefs.
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•
They set task-specific goals, which they use as a basis for selecting, adapting, and
possibly inventing strategies that will help them accomplish their objectives.
• After implementing strategies, they monitor their progress toward goals, thereby
generating internal feedback about the success of their efforts.
• They adjust their strategies and efforts based on their perception of ongoing progress.
• They use motivational strategies to keep themselves on task when they become
discouraged or encounter difficulties.
Self-regulated learners are flexible. They don't do these tasks just once. Rather, they go
through the above list recursively, looping back to make adjustments as necessary (Butler &
Winne [5], 1995; Carver & Scheier, 1990; Zimmerman [30], 1989).
Self-regulation refers to the use of processes that activate and sustain thoughts, behaviors,
and affects in order to attain goals (Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997). In other words, it refers to
taking charge of our own learning by coordinating the thinking skills. Self-regulation has three
components:
• Self-observation (monitoring one's activities).
• Self-judgment (self-evaluation of one's current progress toward a goal with a standard).
• Self-reaction (Making evaluative responses to performance outcomes).
That is, learners regulate their own learning by observing what they are able to do, then
comparing this what they have observed to a standard of some kind and making judgments about
the quality of this performance, and finally making plans regarding what to do next. By carefully
examining the components of self-regulated learning, we can develop more effective strategies
for helping students in development of this important skill.
In summary, academic self-regulation includes skills such as the following (McCombs,
1989; Schunk, 1994; Zimmerman [30], 1994):
• Valuing learning and its anticipated outcomes
• Setting performance goals
• Planning and managing time
• Holding positive beliefs about one's abilities
• Attending to and concentrating on instruction
• Effectively organizing, rehearsing, and encoding information
• Setting up a productive work environment
• Using social resources effectively
• Focusing on positive effects
• Making useful attributions for success and failure
Suggestions for developing metacognitive skills
•
•
Help students assess the task by being more explicit than you may think necessary.
Don’t assume that a basic description is enough. Fill in the details so that students know
what they are being asked to do.
Help students evaluate how well they’re equipped to do the task by providing
opportunities for self-assessment early and often. Show students how these kinds of
assessments are helpful—how the self-knowledge they reveal enables students to better
understand what the task requires.
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•
•
•
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Help students plan an appropriate approach by first implementing a plan you’ve
provided and then by creating their own plans. It also helps if you make planning a
central goal of the assignment. That means making time for it and letting it be a part of
the assignment that counts.
Help students apply selected strategies and monitor progress by having students do
guided self-assessments. Give them a set of criteria and help them apply those to what
they’ve accomplished so far. Make reflection a part of the assignment by having students
explain what they are doing and why. Peer review can also help students be realistic
about their own progress and that of other student.
Help students adjust their strategies by encouraging them to analyze the effectiveness
of what they’ve done. They need to reflect on their progress as they work on the task and
on their performance once the task has been completed. They also need to know that
there are multiple ways of tackling the task so that if what they tried did not work very
well, they can use another approach next time.
Conclusion
Metacognitive skills play a significant role in organizing the tasks we perform. These skills
help a student plan, set goals, initiate, monitor and manage progress on tasks and correct
mistakes. On the flip side, students without such skills cannot plan effectively, let alone oversee
their own work from the beginning to the conclusion. Metacognitive skills affect learning in
many ways but especially with respect to the efficient use of limited cognitive resources, strategy
use, and comprehension monitoring. Children and adults often experience difficulty in learning
because of cognitive overload - that is, too much mental work to do and too few cognitive
resources at their disposal. Research reveals that declarative and procedural knowledge enables
learners to use available resources more efficiently because they are better able to plan,
sequence, and monitor learning tasks.
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