#16: Thinking about learning
It's a meta thing
I recently came across a distinction I haven’t heard before, that we can divide cognitive science into soft and hard varieties. The basic premise, as I understand it, is that hard cognitive science represents aspects of learning related to areas such as memory, including processes such as encoding and consolidation and models such as Cognitive Load Theory, working memory, and so on. Soft cognitive science would, I assume, include aspects of mindset and metacognition.
I’m not sure how keen I am on such a distinction. I spent many years teaching psychology, so I am accustomed to having to defend my subject from those who believed it to be soft, the implication being that it’s not as worthy as the hard subjects (such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, and so on). I have also assumed that this hard-soft distinction is one reason why cognitive science has become the preferred label of many educators and policy makers, to the detriment of cognitive psychology.
Metacognition (or, thinking about thinking)
Anyway, this got me thinking about a specific area of learning that might be considered soft: metacognition. How important we view it does seem to depend on some kind of hierarchy of perceived value. In Psychology in the Classroom we do discuss it (or rather Jonathan does). Becoming Buoyant frequently discusses it and, indeed, one might convincingly argue that the entire book draws on metacognitive strategies. David Didau, in his book Making Kids Cleverer, however, dedicates only a few paragraphs to it (this is not a criticism - it’s a very interesting read and I’d highly recommend it).
These differences might very well be down to a certain fuzziness of the concept, or it’s often seemingly all-encompassing claims.
What is it?
We generally perceive metacognition as ‘thinking about thinking.’ In Psychology in the Classroom, Jonathan described it as:
…any type of thinking about thinking… including, thinking about our own memory abilities, or about the process we use when solving a problem, or about our own planning and organisational skills.
Smith & Firth, 2018, p58.
Here’s another definition:
…a second or higher order thinking process which involves active control over cognitive processes. Mevarech & Kramarski, 2014, p36.
This one is from Costa and Kallick, 2009:
Our ability to know what we know and what we don’t know.
This leads us quite nicely to the American developmental psychologist, John Flavell (who coined the original term), who describes metacognition as:
A fuzzy concept of multifarious definitions.
Flavell, 1981.
Related concepts all include the meta moniker, such as meta memory and meta awareness. We also talk of metacognitive skills.
But what does metacognition actually involve on practical level?
Flavell describes metacognition as a regulatory system involving knowledge, experiences, goals, and strategies. It can, therefore, be divided into two broad categories: cognition of the subject (including, knowledge, ability, resources, and cognitive, affective, and physiological state) and metacognitive regulation/awareness (including, monitoring, planning, regulating to optimise performance during the task, and evaluating and reflecting on the cognitive process after the performance).
This means that knowledge can be considered as metacognitive, depending on how we use it. One obvious example would be tailoring learning to take into account what we know about how memory functions. I know the difference between short and long term memory, working memory, cognitive load and so on, so I can use this knowledge to increase my own learning effectiveness. But I can also use my knowledge of planning, goal setting, procrastination, motivation, and wider aspects of academic buoyancy.
How important is metacognition?
Schraw views metacognition as ‘one of the most important factors leading to success in learning,’ while Posner states:
Students will not really learn new information if they do not go through a metacognitive realisation that requires them to examine how they thought about the topic before and how they are thinking differently about the topic now.
Posner et al., 1982.
Many studies have found metacognition to be associated with promoting young students’ overall academic success, while those with poor metacognitive skills tend to perform less well academically. There is also an element of self-regulation here, a skill common amongst more effective learners. There’s also a strong suggestion that an adequate level of metacognition may compensate for cognitive limitations.
Metacognition in adult learners
There’s a tendency to discuss learning in relation to school aged learners, yet learning is an endeavour that spans our lives. Adult learners do differ from younger learners, and I discussed this in #6. These differences invariably include age, motivation, experience and responsibility, but also elements of cognitive decline, particularly in regards to rote memory.
Of course, learning is more than rote memory and involves an interaction between many factors, including; intellectual state, motivation, self-efficacy, educational experience, physical and emotional state, as well well as many others.
Metacognitive skills, therefore, are crucial to the experiences of adult learners, due to the complexity of their social roles and prior knowledge and experiences.
Adult learners are certainly highly motivated, but their past experiences can both help and hider learning. Often, adult learners are presented with new ways of doing things, ways that weren’t common when they were at school. Studying mathematics is perhaps one of the most obvious areas, where processes used today differ from those used decades ago - learning methods move on and often us older folks get left behind.
This is turn can lead to a fear of returning to some kind of formal education, despite us being highly motivated to do so. Adult learners are not just required to learn new methods, but also to re-assess themselves as learners. Metacognition, therefore, includes knowledge about ourselves as cognitive agents.
Can we learn to become more metacognitive?
One of the more interesting outcomes of metacognition is its ability to correct misleading information. It’s surprisingly easy for us to assimilate false information into current schemas, and this is even more relevant today with the increase in so-called fake news. A study from 2020 found that introducing ‘metacognitive reflection’ into a reading task, reduced the number of judgement errors.
Bailey, Dunlosky and Hertzos investigated the use of a metacognitive training package for use at home. They looked at older adults (between 60 and 89 years) and tailored their training to focus on age-related cognitive decline.
Often, such interventions involve mnemonic training, which has been found to be benefit older adults. However, the 2020 study used an intervention developed by John Dunlosky and his colleagues that included two interrelated self-regulation strategies; self-testing and study time allocation. The authors concluded:
Training meta-cognitive skills, such as self-testing and efficient study allocation, can improve the ability to learn new information in healthy older adults. More importantly, older adult clients can be supplied with an at-home training manual, which will ease the burden on practitioners.
Metacognition, therefore, can be thought of as the process of learning - it’s an awareness of what we do and how we go about doing it. It’s about thinking about what we’ve learned and using these experience to improve. Most interestingly, perhaps, it can we be taught, and it doesn’t appear to matter at what stage of life we’re at.