Education Endowment Foundation:We know that metacognition is important, but how do we teach it?

‘Mr Malik knew his science students varied in confidence and motivation to revise at home. Over time, he modelled how to plan, monitor, and evaluate their revision, showing how to break a topic into short tasks, use flashcards or quick quizzes for recall, and check progress against success criteria.

Gradually, Tanya began to use these ideas. At first, she struggled to stay focused, but with practice and feedback she became more confident, starting to independently plan short revision sessions, testing herself, and reviewing what to revisit next time.’

By explicitly teaching and modelling these strategies, Mr Malik helped Tanya begin to take greater ownership of her learning.

Metacognition is the ability to be aware of, reflect upon, and direct our own learning. Self-regulated learners, like Tanya, apply metacognitive strategies to manage their motivation, set goals, monitor working, and review progress.

What does the research evidence say?

Metacognition has long attracted attention as one of the most promising approaches for improving pupils’ learning outcomes. self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances.”>EEF’s meta-analysis of 355 individual studies in the Teaching and Learning Toolkit
found that use of metacognitive and self-regulated learning strategies led to an average of eight months of additional progress for pupils.

Indeed, in many respects, metacognition seems to represent the ​‘holy grail’: a high-impact, low-cost approach which can be used from early years through to primary, secondary and 16 – 19 settings, and across curriculum subjects with similar effects. However, we know that many pupils, including some from disadvantaged backgrounds, may have had fewer opportunities to develop metacognitive and self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. strategies unless these are explicitly taught and modelled in school.

Role of the teacher

This means that the role of the teacher is key. We not only need to teach metacognitive strategies to our pupils, but we also need to signpost these clearly, helping pupils to understand how and why these help promote their learning. This gives us the best chance of helping more pupils to acquire the independent learning skills they need to become a little more like Tanya, featured in the above vignette.

Nine metacognitive strategies

To help teachers and leaders achieve this, the EEF’s updated Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning guidance report provides clear and actionable guidance on teaching strategies which can be used in the classroom to support pupils to effectively plan, monitor and evaluate their learning. EEF has also published a new tool, outlining nine metacognitive strategies which can be explicitly taught, modelled, and scaffolded to help pupils use them with increasing independence.

Just like any other strategy, pupils need explicit teaching and modelling to use these strategies effectively. Similarly, providing scaffolds enables pupils to build confidence when first using new metacognitive strategies, before gradually reducing this support to prompt pupils to assume increasing responsibility for their own learning over time.

Next steps:

The following three actions may provide a starting point for those interested in developing metacognition and self-regulated learning in their own contexts:

1. Read ​‘Recommendation 2: Explicitly teach pupils metacognitive strategies, including how to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning’ of the EEF’s updated​‘Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning’ guidance report.
   
   Share the ​‘Metacognitive Strategies’ tool with colleagues, and discuss how these strategies could be used in different curriculum subjects to meet the needs of pupils.
   
   Consider how pupils’ use of metacognitive strategies can be scaffolded to encourage pupils to assume greater independence over time. EEF’s ​‘Scaffolding Pupils’ Use of Metacognitive Strategies’ tool may help support these discussions and reflections.