Food for Thought: Self regulated learning and metacognition (Part 1)

Last week, in my email with the Food For Thought link, I attached a very useful document from the Education Endowment Foundation EEF. This site has lots of excellent resources across 14 different categories of toolkits that were mots requested by teachers. Here is the list of categories where resources have been created from educational research. If you click on the topic it should take you to the relevant page on EEF. There is lots of information here that is research-based and tested that could be used to inform our committee work that we are continuing on October 11th. Please take a look at areas that interest you.

B 

Behaviour: Improving pupil engagement and minimising disruptive behaviour.

C 

Character & essential life skills: Building attitudes, skills and behaviours that support children’s learning and personal development.

De

Developing effective learners: Supporting pupils to become effective and self-motivated learners.

Ey

Early Years: Supporting children’s early learning and development.

E

Enrichment: Extending learning beyond traditional academic priorities, including careers education, and participation in the arts and sports.

F

Feedback & monitoring pupil progress: Using assessment to understand pupils’ strengths, weaknesses and progress, and how to address these through feedback.

L

Language and literacy: Evidence on literacy from the Teaching and Learning Toolkit alongside the findings from recent EEF projects.

M

Mathematics: Improving the teaching and learning of mathematics.

O

Organising your school: Addressing school-level structural and organisational issues, such as timetabling, class size, the built environment, and digital technology.

P

Parental engagement: Helping parents to support their children’s learning.

Fe

Post-16: Supporting learners yet to secure a good pass in GCSE English and Maths.

S

Science: Improving the teaching and learning of science.

Sn

Special Educational Needs & Disabilities: Supporting pupils with a learning difficulty or disability which requires special educational provision.

St

Staff deployment & development: Improving the quality of teaching through staff deployment and Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

In conjunction with the EEF pdf that I shared last week on Metacognition and Self Regulated Learners, I thought that it might be useful this week to ensure that we all have a common understanding of Metacognition. Hence I am sharing two videos depending on your own confidence in this area. If you feel you understand metacognition and know how and why it is important jump to video 2.  The first video is from the Smithsonian Science Education Center that goes through metacognition and provides strategies for adaption in classrooms. Because it is the form of a cartoon it may appear too simplified, however, it does remove many misconceptions that many of us may have about what exactly is Metacognition and how can it be developed in a classroom.

The second video, produced by Dr. Tomas Armstrong although titled 6 Metacognitive Strategies for Middle and High Schoolers ( this is because of the presenter felt that Piaget's developmental model for students points to metacognition being practically useful around the age of 12) I feel is very applicable to teachers of all ages to understand this concept of learning. 

To finish this week's Food for Thought I am going to return to the EEF website and share their findings with you. Evidence suggests the use of ‘metacognitive strategies’ – which get pupils to think about their own learning - can be worth the equivalent of an additional +7 months’ progress when used well. 

"METACOGNITION AND SELF REGULATED LEARNERS

Metacognition and self-regulation approaches aim to help pupils think about their own learning more explicitly, often by teaching them specific strategies for planning, monitoring and evaluating their learning. Interventions are usually designed to give pupils a repertoire of strategies to choose from and the skills to select the most suitable strategy for a given learning task.

Self-regulated learning can be broken into three essential components:

• cognition - the mental process involved in knowing, understanding, and learning;

• metacognition - often defined as ‘learning to learn’; and

• motivation - willingness to engage our metacognitive and cognitive skills.

Metacognition and self-regulation approaches have consistently high levels of impact, with pupils making an average of seven months’ additional progress.

These strategies are usually more effective when taught in collaborative groups so that learners can support each other and make their thinking explicit through discussion.

The potential impact of these approaches is high, but can be difficult to achieve in practice as they require pupils to take greater responsibility for their learning and develop their understanding of what is required to succeed.

A number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses have consistently found strategies related to metacognition and self-regulation to have large positive impacts. Most studies have looked at the impact on English or mathematics, though there is some evidence from other subject areas like science, suggesting that the approach is likely to be widely applicable.

The approaches that have been tested tend to involve applying self-regulation strategies to specific tasks involving subject knowledge, rather than learning generic ‘thinking skills’.

The EEF has evaluated a number of programmes that seek to improve ‘learning to learn’ skills. The majority have found positive impacts, although smaller in size (around 2 months’ progress on average) than the average seen in the wider evidence base. For three of these programmes there were indications that they were particularly beneficial for pupils from low income families.

A 2014 study, Improving Writing Quality, used a structured programme of writing development based on a self-regulation strategy. The evaluation found gains, on average, of an additional nine months’ progress, suggesting that the high average impact of self-regulation strategies is achievable in English schools.

The EEF has published guidance on applying the evidence on metacognition and self-regulation in the classroom. The guidance report can be found here."