Metacognition in Educational Psychology

1. Chapter 9:
Complex Cognitive Process
Maicah Saballegue

2. In this chapter we will discuss a number of
executive control processes….
• Executive Control Processes are the
selective attention, rehearsal, elaboration
and organization that influence
encoding, storage and retrieval of
information in memory.

3. Such as …
• Attention Rehearsal Elaborating

4. Metacognition – is the awareness and
understanding of one's own thought processes.

5. • According to John Flavell, Metacognition is higher order knowledge about
your own thinking a well as the ability to use this ability to manage your own
cognitive processes such as comprehension and problem solving.

6. • People differ in how well and how they quickly they learn because they differ
in their metacognitive knowledge and skills.

9. Metacognition involves 3 kinds of knowledge
we discussed earlier…
• Declarative knowledge – “Knowing what to do” about yourself as a
learner, the factors that influence your learning and memory.
• Procedural knowledge – “Knowing how” to use the strategies.
• Self-regulatory knowledge – “Knowing the conditions” when and why, to
apply the procedures and strategies.

10. There are 3 essential skills in Metacognition…
• Planning Monitoring Evaluating

12. • Of course, we don’t have to be metacognitive all the time. Some actions
become routine or habits.
• Metacognition is most useful when tasks are challenging, but not too
difficult.
• Experts in a particular field plan, monitor and evaluate as Second nature.

13. • Metacognition involves choosing the best way to approach a learning task.
Students with good metacognitive skills set goals, organize their activities,
select among various approaches to learning and change strategies if needed.

14. • Metacognitive abilities begin to develop around ages 5 to 7 and improve
throughout school.
• Working to improve metacognitive skills can be especially important for
students who often have trouble in school.

15. Metacognitive Development for younger
students.
• KWL – a cooperative strategy used by many teachers to guide reading and
inquiry.
• K – What do I already know about this subject
• W – what do I want to know
• L – at the end of the reading or inquiry, What have I learned?

16. Metacognitive Development for secondary
students and college students…
• Teachers can incorporate metacognitive questions into their lessons, lectures
and assignments.
Example:
• What are my intellectual strengths and weaknesses?
• How can I motivate myself to learn when I need to?

17. Learning Strategies
• A special kind of procedural knowledge
– knowing how to approach learning
tasks.

18. Some teachers think that memorizing is learning, this may
explain why many students cling to flash cards and
memorizing – but they don’t know what else to do.

19. The way something is learned in the first place greatly influences
how readily we remember the information and how can we
appropriately apply the knowledge later.
1. Students must be
Cognitively engaged in order
to learn. Then, they have to
focus attention on the
relevant or important aspects
of the material.

20. 2. They have to invest effort, make connections, elaborate, translate, invent
organize and recognize in order to think. And process deeply the greater the
practice and processing, the stronger the learning.

21. • 3. Students must regulate and monitor their own learning – keep track of
what is making sense and notice when a new approach is needed, that is, they
must be metacognitive.

22. Being strategic about learning…
• There are thousands of strategies, some are general and taught in school,
such as summarizing and outlining.
• Others are specific to the subject such as using mnemonic…

23. Example:
“My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos”
Mars
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune

24. Deciding what is important
• Distinguishing the main idea from the less important information is not
always easy. Often students focus on the “seductive details” or the concrete
examples, perhaps because they are more interesting. Teachers can give
students practice using signals in texts such as headings, bold words, outlines
or other indicators to identify key concepts and main ideas.

25. Underlining and Highlighting
• The most frequent but ineffectively used strategies among college students.
• One common problem is that students underline or highlighting too much.

26. Taking notes
• It focuses attention during class
• Makes you construct meaning from what are you hearing, seeing or reading,
so you elaborate, translate into your own words and remember.
• It provides extended external storage that allows you to return and review

27. Visual tools for organizing
• Using concept maps etc.

28. Reading Strategies
• A strategy that can be used in reading literature is CAPS:
C – who are the characters?
A – what is the aim of the story?
P – what problem happens?
S – how is the problem solved?

29. Production deficiencies
• Students learn problem-solving strategies, but do not apply them when they
could or should.

30. Problem Solving
• Problem – any situation in which
you are trying to reach some goal and
must find a mean to do.
• Problem Solving – creating news
solutions for problems.

32. Give Examples:
• Students benefit from seeing many different kinds of example problems
worked out correctly for them.