Metacognition and me

In a previous blog, I wrote about metacognition and how I use it with my students as part of my teaching practice. I had briefly described metacognition, but without going into great detail on the subject. Following the publication of the blog, I received various questions about its definition and my view on metacognition. Today, I will try to shed some light on the subject.

The general definition of metacognition is "cognition of cognition" or "thinking about one's own thoughts". This means that metacognition is the act of questioning one's knowledge and strategies as a learner and is the awareness (verbalized or not) of one's processes of memorization and learning. It is a part of self-knowledge directly related to our ability to learn and to master or exploit our personal knowledge.

"Shall I teach you about knowledge? What you know, you know, what you don't know, you don't know. This is true wisdom" Confucius

In short, metacognition is having the ability to stop and think about one's way of understanding things. It develops on its own, but it can also be developed by parents, teachers and young people themselves. This collective dimension of learning has always attracted me and I believe that, as a teacher, we must rely more on metacognition to guide our students along the path of knowledge.

How? By constantly questioning them about the tasks they perform, and also how they performed them. Giving them time to self-assess (considering their abilities, the difficulties they encountered, etc.) on a regular basis so that they create the habit of questioning themselves. By explaining our cognitive journey, expressing aloud what is going on in our minds as we complete those tasks that we must. Asking them to set learning objectives for themselves in collective projects or single tasks. Through discussion in large groups or individually of how they will approach the proposed activity, their concerns, how they will achieve their goals.

In summary, in my view, metacognition is more than learning to learn or to think about one's thoughts. The concept goes much further. Using metacognition in the classroom is more about allowing students, unconsciously, to better understand how they learn effectively. This will allow them to use strategies that meet their personal needs and not those of the other students.

I like the idea, that by using cognitive education as part of my teaching, I focus on integrating knowledge rather than on the memorization of it, developing my students' autonomy, on "how I learn" and developing strategies that are unique to each learner.