Education Endowment Foundation:How to use visual, verbal, and written scaffolding to support pupils’ use of metacognitive strategies

Metacognition and self-regulated learning offer huge potential for improving learning outcomes. The EEF’s meta-analysis of 355 individual studies in the Teaching and Learning Toolkit found that metacognitive and self-regulated learning strategies led to an average of eight months of additional progress for pupils over the course of a year. Even more promisingly, the benefits of metacognition have been demonstrated across subjects and age phases (early years, primary and secondary).

From evidence to classroom

While the impacts of metacognition are clear, knowing how to develop it in classrooms has previously been less straightforward. Many pupils, including those from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, need explicit teaching to use metacognitive and self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. strategies independently.

For example, when using metacognitive strategies, it’s crucial to ensure that we’re explicit in communicating how these support learning. It’s not enough simply to model a metacognitive strategy such as ​‘goal setting’. Instead, we need to teach pupils how to effectively use this strategy, as well as how and why this helps them to be successful.

Scaffolding metacognitive strategies

The third recommendation from the EEF’s updated Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning guidance report provides useful tips to help teachers promote the development of pupils’ self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. and metacognition gradually over time, without placing too much strain on pupils’ mental resources too quickly.

This includes carefully scaffolding pupils’ use of metacognitive strategies, following the principle of providing​‘the least amount of support first’. This means encouraging pupils to self-scaffold wherever possible and offering scaffolds to prompt, clue, model or correct only when pupils are unable to proceed without additional support.

What effective scaffolding looks like

Scaffolds come in a range of formats. They can be visual, verbal, or written. Just like the scaffolding used in construction, they are intended to offer temporary support. In this case, until pupils are ready to complete tasks and apply strategies without the need for additional assistance. 

However, the process of carefully tailoring scaffolds to provide the right degree of support – and challenge – for pupils can be complex. Staff members are likely to require training and guidance to help them use these appropriately. 

To help teachers and leaders consider their explicit teaching and scaffolding of metacognitive strategies, the EEF has developed a tool to share examples of the visual, verbal, and written scaffolds which can be used to gradually build pupils’ independence over time.

This tool shows how key metacognitive strategies can be adapted to provide different levels of support appropriate to the needs of individual pupils.

For example, ​‘Thinking Aloud’ can be modelled by adults, demonstrating how to plan, monitor, and evaluate approaches to learning by verbalising thinking. However, as pupils becoming more familiar with this strategy, it can also be prompted by providing written ​‘Think Aloud protocols’ to scaffold pupils’ own narration of their thinking.

This tool can serve as a starting point for discussion for anyone looking to scaffold the development of metacognition and self-regulated learning in their own context. This in turn can help pupils across age phases to use these key strategies with increasing independence and ownership.