Running head: METACOGNITION
METACOGNITION 6
Metacognition
Catherine Baulkman
EDU372: Educational Psychology
November 28, 2020
Metacognition is the ability to know about one’s learning. It is the ability to monitor and evaluate one’s learning. It is also knowing one’s cognitive processes. With metacognition skills, one can monitor their progress as they learn something relatively new to them. People can also realize that there are strategies that can be applied to easily remembers various concepts that have been learned. Metacognition entails knowing when to use specific learning strategies.
Some metacognition skills are the ability to generalize, make abstractions, critical judgments, and the ability to reflect. When learning something new, one has to make critical judgments of various things or concepts. He/she must be able to reflect on the existing knowledge to learn the new one. One should be able to generalize something to learn or realize that there is something in common.
Metacognition skills are important as they increase student motivation. They enable students to become aware of their thinking. Students can become active learners who can learn more deeply. They also develop positive attitudes towards learning and their academic and behavioral performance improves. With metacognition skills, the changes have a growth mindset as they believe that their ability to learn can be improved.
Students can be taught to think by using reciprocal teaching, the Montessori Approach, cognitive apprenticeship, and cognitive modeling. In reciprocal teaching, students are taught strategies such as generating questions, comprehension, attempting to clarify the meanings of words, and summarizing. Teachers model various strategies to enable the students to understand easily. The students are encouraged to ask questions, make predictions, clear up any misunderstandings, and ask for clarifications. Students can learn to do more work as the work that teachers have to do reduces. One student can ask a question while others answer it and ask for clarifications.
The Montessori approach is based on self-directed activity. It is marked by collaborative learning and hands-on learning. The approach enables children to learn persistence, dependence, and individual skills. They also develop self-regulated learning. A cognitive apprenticeship can also be used to teach students how to think. It views the students as apprentices.
