Metacognition in simple terms is the process of thinking about one’s own thinking and learning. Metacognition is a concept that is becoming increasingly popular in the field of education. Metacognition refers to a student’s ability to be aware of what they are learning and thinking. It capture’s the student’s ability to analyze how they think, it provides a high self-awareness and control of their thoughts which eventually leads to choosing an appropriate solution to their tasks. The importance of metacognition in education is on the rise as it helps students ace their learning process.
Let’s look at how metacognition actually prevails in education -
- Recent up-gradation in the education system have emphasized the importance of encouraging students to figure out how to be independent and do self-study. As students move to higher education they are expected to do some study and be self-regulated learners, as then the teachers do not spoon-feed all notes and study material. Students are expected to find out their own study material as the internet has endless possibilities of acquiring knowledge.
- Adding to it, teachers cannot be there to guide them beyond their academic boundaries. This demands that students reflect on their learning inappropriate ways. Students are expected to reflect on what they learn and think and acquire outside of the class boundaries. It required students to critically think their own thinking in order to overcome complex or uncertain situations.
- Having high self-awareness and control over their thoughts is essential for all students. It is important to be aware of the individual skills and what one is capable to do or incapable of doing that tasks. Those students who lack metacognitive thinking tend to overestimate themselves and doubt their abilities. As a result of such unawareness, when students do not succeed, they suffer a major setback.
- In a student’s life, there’s competition everywhere, be in the classroom environment where they acquire grades or on the field where they win or lose in a competition, metacognitive thinking is essential. Students need to understand that they cannot be winning at everything. Some are good at grades, some are good at curricular. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses and capabilities as individual student is particularly useful when you are looking at areas of improvement.
- Metacognition is important in education as through metacognitive thinking, students can think about which strategy they can use to fulfill a target or goal. Through metacognition, they can use a technique that has worked previously for something similar and what’s the best fit for that problem.
- Metacognition can help students to stay focused. During a task, students can use metacognitive skills to make sure that they are staying on track and look at their process and recognize if they are doing it right or not. Metacognitive skills are basically critical thinking skills where you can think about what you are actually doing and if according to you, that is right or wrong.
- Also after the job is done, students can have a self debrief that is consistent regardless of the outcome will ensure that excessive doubt or appreciation does not overpower their judgment or learning. Students should be able to learn from every event, even if they ace at it or do not. Therefore, if they did not ace at the task this time, it gives them a fair chance to find out their areas of improvement and work on them.
- Metacognitive regulation is where students regulate their own thinking and acting process. It refers to all the different strategies that students can use to manage their learning or acquiring process. This skill includes how well students plan, monitor, and evaluate their performance. Regulating their own learning and thought procedure help students identify that if a particular strategy is not working out or giving them the results they could use another technique to achieve the targets or goals.
- Metacognitive knowledge refers to when students are aware of their own cognitive processes. It includes knowing about their strengths or weaknesses and identifying the drawbacks and how to improve at them. This type of metacognition helps students recognize their top skills and how to use them to solve problems.
Some of the metacognitive strategies to use during your class are - Encouraging students to manage their own learning instead of providing them with every detail in the topic. Encouraging students to keep asking questions. Keep in mind that not all students are confident, but you as an educator need to make sure that shy students too speak up at times by building a free environment in your class. There are more such ways where teachers can help students build their metacognitive skills.
Hope this blog helps you to understand the importance of metacognition in education. Stay tuned to read more such blogs.
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