How SENCOs, Teachers, and Teaching Assistants can bring metacognition to life in every classroom

For Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs), Teaching Assistants (TAs) are often so many things. They’re the ones who make support happen, the eyes and ears on the ground, the leaders of intervention, the difference-makers on school trips, the reassurers for parents and the ones who give careful insights around pupil needs.

When their potential for impact is taken seriously, TAs can also play an important role in driving whole-school priorities, particularly for many pupils with special educational needs and/​or disabilities (SEND).

Shared priorities for change

Effective SENCOs are clear about the priorities that will make the biggest difference to pupils. They align these priority changes to research evidence. And they work with other school leaders to make sure proposed changes become join priorities, not just a personal project.

One area of focus is metacognition – ​‘the ways learners monitor and purposefully direct their learning’. Metacognition has a strong evidence base for supporting many pupils with SEND, as well as their peers (Cullen, M.A. et al, 2020 p.126).

The updated EEF Metacognition and Self-regulation guidance report reminds us that effective metacognitive approaches are woven into everyday classroom practice, through modelling, questioning, and scaffolding.

So how might a SENCO support metacognition to become ​‘lived and breathed’ in classrooms? Part of the answer could lie in successful TA-teacher partnerships.

Metacognition in practice

Like any leader seeking to effect change, a SENCO should start by ensuring their desired change is the right one. Effective implementation starts with a thorough ​‘explore’ phase, if the correct priorities for change are to be truly understood.

Once the right priority is identified – in this case the use of metacognitive strategies – a SENCO will consider that it’s more likely to lead to the desired change if the school’s professional development programme:

• builds staffs’ knowledge of what metacognition means
• motivates staff to see why this change matters
  
• develops staffs’ ability to apply techniques in classrooms
• embeds practice over time

When a shared understanding of metacognition is developed, a SENCO might support colleagues’ ability to:

• teach pupils metacognitive strategies
• model their own metacognitive thinking
• promote metacognitive talk in the classroom.

It’s often how these teaching techniques are embedded that leads to true impact in classrooms. This brings us back to the vital role of effective TA-teacher partnerships.

Embedding practice through TA-teacher partnerships

SENCOs will often say that provision in their school is really good in some classrooms, but not yet great in all. New initiatives can start well but lose momentum. The challenge isn’t starting change, it’s keeping it alive.

Effective teacher-TA partnerships can help the benefits of professional development to be felt longer-term. Building in opportunities for ongoing teacher-TA dialogue can be an important part of positively meeting the needs of more pupils with SEND.

This ongoing dialogue might focus on how verbal scaffolds can promote metacognitive thinking, using prompts such as:

• What might be tricky here?
• What will you do first?
• What could you use to help you?
• What does success look like for this task?
• What strategies have you used in the past to solve similar problems
• What aspect of the task will challenge you and require your particular focus?

This practice-development is not a one-off training session. It needs to be part of discussions lesson-by-lesson or week-by-week. This process will help to refine how the evidence can be applied meaningfully for a given cohort of pupils.

SENCOs can play a key role in supporting these conversations, perhaps by providing tools such as this starting point for discussion or these examples of effective scaffolds. This ongoing dialogue supports TA preparedness and helps ensure that a priority on a school development plan become lived, discussed and enacted in classrooms over time.

From evidence to everyday practice

Whether launching something new or refining existing practice, the goal is the same: for evidence to be interpreted, shared, and used meaningfully in every classroom.

When SENCOs create space for teachers and TAs to think together, evidence becomes action and metacognition moves from guidance on a page to practice that changes learning.