#104 Learning Consciousness

Hi Everyone

Whether you are someone interested in pursuing personal (or professional) development, or someone who is tasked with developing the minds of others, (ie; educators), metacognition should be top of your agenda. Why do I say that? Because ‘development’ by its very nature, involves changing the way we used to think.

Our minds are in constant flow, interacting with the world around us through all five senses, with the brain interpreting everything we absorb. As small children this is how we learn, using natural, inbuilt ‘cognition’ to soak up information from our environment and the people in it.

In the early years this is an unconscious download that doesn’t involve much in the way of reasoning about the value or validity of what’s being stored. It’s a protective way of learning a massive amount in a short space of time in order to know; how the world works (safety), where we ‘fit’ (belonging) and the social expectations of the culture we’re born into (relationships).

Because of this instinctive process, whenever they start school, most children are already very capable learners, but very quickly have to make the switch to being ‘taught’ a curriculum. That requires a conscious level of thought that many are not ready for at that stage.

Unless a child is lucky enough to attend an educational establishment that values the development of metacognition and independent learning for all their learners, some may start to struggle. If we’re going to insist on children receiving a formal education (and I’m not knocking it), then we have to help them to develop a different way of thinking from the one that they’re used to.

Younger children do use metacognition to recognise when something isn’t working for them and will automatically change to a different method in the hopes of achieving something. Most of the time however, that’s an unconscious process which doesn’t work so well in a classroom setting, where reasoning and recall are no longer linked to natural curiosity or being physically involved.

We have to teach children how to become more conscious of their own minds, so that they recognise when the way they’re thinking is not leading to the results they want, (or often more specifically what we want for them). Metacognition is what allows a mind to pay attention to its own thoughts, analyse how those thoughts are contributing to a problem, and then change to a more effective way of solving it.

If you’re an adult who did not do well in school and was very glad to leave the restraints of formal education behind you, it may be worth considering if a lack of metacognition might have been behind your inability to engage in a more fulfilling way. It’s presumed that children can make the switch from that natural and very effective way of learning pre-school, to being taught a culturally determined curriculum in the classroom. Many of us don’t!

If you went through school not ‘getting it’ and feeling inadequate in comparison to some of your peers, this may well have been the issue. However old you are now, please make careful note that the fault lay with the education system and not you. You did have the capacity to learn, (and still do), you were just never taught ‘how’ to learn effectively.

If you find yourself saying ‘I was rubbish at school’, you might like to reframe that as, ‘I was not taught effectively’. You can now change the beliefs you hold about your own ability and independently become a more effective learner in whatever field of interest you may have. Metacognition allows you to take stock of your self-belief, realise which thoughts are holding you back, and make a new choice about what you want to achieve.

We have to put the development of metacognitive ability at the forefront of education. The capacity to use it has a massive impact on both the educational, and subsequent life chances of all children and young people. The most effective way of doing that is to ‘naturalise’ metacognition in the classroom, rather than to ‘formalise’ it with frameworks that can act as yet another barrier to learning.

Next time we’ll look at developing mental capacity for learning. See you then.

Warm regards

Liz