Why Metacognition Matters
Ever since formal schooling was created, schools have focused on making sure that students learn specific content with a heavy focus on the memorization of dates, facts and formulas. To be sure, learning content is part of any good education. However, there is a large and growing body of research which shows that students educated to develop metacognition achieve at higher levels and experience increased social and emotional success. We now know a truly exceptional education must include explicit instruction in metacognitive skills.
What is metacognition? At its most elemental level, Metacognition is the process of thinking about one’s thinking with the overall goal of improving learning.
At Applewild, we have made a deep institutional commitment to develop metacognitive skills across all grade levels and subjects. As a result, students develop the following characteristics which serve them well during their time as students, but also throughout their entire lives. These skills or “cognitive assets” include:
- Maintaining an outlook of practical optimism about their learning performance,
- Setting learning goals for themselves, and developing plans to achieve them,
- Focusing on their selective attention and optimizing working memory,
- Monitoring their learning progress, and
- Applying their learning experiences across core subjects and in their personal lives.
(adapted from Wilson & Conyers, Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains, 2016)
Why is learning metacognitive skills vital?
- They “future proof” your child with the skills, attitudes, perspectives to be a flexible learner. The explosive growth of Artificial Intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology and their undeniable enormous impact on future job opportunities demand that we develop the next generation with the ability to learn flexibly. Successful adults will need the mindset of continually seeing themselves as “a work in progress”. Metacognitive skills will allow your child to transfer knowledge from one situation to another as circumstances demand.
- They ensure positive experiences in school through increased social and academic success.
- They reduce stress. Children who learn to deploy these strategies become reflective about their learning and recognize imperfect performance as just one step on their way to mastery.
- They are skills which students will use throughout their entire lives.
- They include strengthening selective attention, allowing students to fluently filter distractions and stay focused at the task at hand.
- They develop cognitive flexibility as students learn how to reroute their learning when they hit a dead end and pursue another path.
- They cement the goal setting skills necessary for planning and organizing all aspects in life.
Our faculty member Jenn Buck recently reflected that metacognition “forced me to slow down and recognize that covering a certain amount of material is not as important as the journey. The process of planning, assessing, revising, reassessing, and reflecting is valuable enough to warrant the time it takes. I know from my own education that learning how to learn is more important than leaving school with a finite cache of skills.” To learn more about the role of metacognition in an exceptional education:
George Luca Educational Foundation: Edutopia.org
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/8-pathways-metacognition-in-classroom-marilyn-price-mitchell
Vanderbilt University: Center for Teaching https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/
The Child Mind Institute https://childmind.org/article/how-metacognition-can-help-kids/
"The Boss of My Brain" by Donna Wilson, Nova Southeastern University and Marcus Conyers, Center for Innovative Education and Prevention
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct14/vol72/num02/%C2%A3The-Boss-of-My-Brain%C2%A3.aspx
Interested in learning how metacognition can change the trajectory of your child’s education?
Visit our school for an informative tour www.applewild.org/contact. Applewild School is an independent Pk-8 day school with locations in Fitchburg and Devens offering accelerated academics, transportation, robust arts (woodshop, studio arts, chorus, drama, band/jazz band), scholarships, athletics, and learning support services.
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