#94 Naturally Metacognitive Classrooms

Hi Everyone

In the previous issue we delved a bit further into what is required if we’re going to make the concept of metacognition more accessible, so that schools feel able to develop it successfully in their pupils. If the media is to be believed, then the school system is now so caught up with strict adherence to school uniform, 100% attendance, and zero tolerance behaviour management, that they’ve lost sight of the real reason for students being there.

Most senior managers and teachers in education joined the profession because they genuinely care about making a real difference in the lives of children and young people. The system itself however, already needing a serious overhaul pre-Covid, continues to struggle with absorbing all the extra challenges that have resulted from the global pandemic. The knee jerk reaction to all of this, seems to have been to re-gain control by tougher measures that leave no room for individuality or independent thought.

The solution actually lies in giving learners the skills they need to improve their own mental health and take greater responsibility for their own academic progress. Mental health deteriorates rapidly when we feel that we don’t have any control over what’s happening to us, so imagine what the current measures are doing to student well-being. Where, under those circumstances does the relevance of being in school go? Developing metacognition helps to re-dress that balance.

Metacognition is not just a bit of scientific jargon that’s bandied about to make someone sound more knowledgeable, it’s an absolutely essential life skill, closely linked to our mental health and quality of life. The word describes our ability to analyse what we’re thinking, realise when our thoughts are not leading to the success we want, and make a conscious change that solves the issue. Lives of desperation often result from adults not having the ability to improve their ‘lot’ by changing the way they think and act.

Developing metacognition in learners is therefore the most effective way of improving attendance, behaviour and attainment. All of those desired changes are achieved by helping students to think differently about themselves and their relationship with learning. Metacognition can only flourish however, where students are given some level of autonomy and control over their own progress. It also requires being immersed in an environment where how to think in a metacognitive way is not only modelled but also sufficient time and space are allocated for ‘working thing out’.

Last time we looked at the importance of looking carefully at where we aim ‘praise’ in the classroom. If you want metacognitively aware students (which is the one thing that genuinely improves school results), then emphasis has to be on creating an environment that encourages effort, resilience, collaboration, questioning and independent thought. Those things are not unfortunately achieved through having an ethos of strict compliance?

We’ve also previously mentioned the need for provision in the classroom being about what you need the students to learn, not what you need to teach them. If we focus on what we want to teach, (assuming that’s going to be whatever’s dictated next by the curriculum), we are far more likely to adopt a lecture style approach where we tell the students what we want them to know, and then provide a consolidation activity of some kind to make sure that they’ve learned it. (Which is unlikely in the true sense of ‘learning’.)

Some will respond to that approach, but we really need ALL students to be on board and for most, that’s not going to happen if they’ve not been ‘involved’ somehow in processing the required information. A learner’s brain has to be actively involved in some kind of ‘experience’ before effective memory traces can be formed. We therefore need to becomes skilled facilitators who provide our classes with experiences from which they can learn rather than throwing our expertise out into the ether and hoping some of it will stick.

So, for a metacognitive classroom we need to decide what it is specifically that we want students to learn, and then provide activities that will allow them to learn it for themselves. A sudden change may be difficult to manage, but you can start with a more open and collaborative environment in the classroom. Group yourself with the class into a ‘community of inquiry’ and start using terms like ‘we’ and ‘find out’ so that the new, more open way of working will make some sense to students.

Start asking more questions that make students think for themselves. The initial response can be a bit muted or they’ll plead with you for an answer because being forced to work something out for themselves is a novel request. But, if you persevere, students become quite enthusiastic about getting involved, especially if you allow the classroom to become an experimental space where they can share what they’re thinking without fear of it being wrong.

Keep following as I develop these proven ideas further, or if you’re based in England, you might like to consider hiring me to deliver a one-off training day for your school to help find more effective ways of developing metacognition naturally in ALL of your students. Just message me at; [email protected] for more information.

See you next time, take care till then.

Warm regards

Liz