BOLD explores… Children's metacognition

I’m Alicia Forsberg, and I’m a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Sheffield. My research explores the development of working memory, learning and metacognition over the lifespan.

Metacognition is often described as thinking about thinking. In simple terms, it means being aware of how your own mind works. Knowing what you know, understanding how you learn, and being able to manage your own thinking. This awareness helps us plan, monitor and evaluate how we approach learning and problem solving. One area of metacognition that’s especially interesting to me is metamemory. Our awareness and control of what we remember and what we forget. For example, when you can tell that you’ve forgotten something and decide to review it, you’re using metamemory.

Researchers often break metacognition into a few different key parts, including knowledge about yourself as a learner. Knowing your strengths, weaknesses, and limits. The second part is the ability to monitor your thinking in real time. So, paying attention to things like which strategies did you apply while you were solving a problem or learning something? Next we have awareness of your mental experiences. So, noticing feelings of confidence, difficulty or effort or that you’re zoning out or not paying attention. The final one is reflecting on what you’ve learnt. So, thinking about how well you understood the specific material. Together these skills support effective learning in both children and adults.

Metacognition is thought to play a very important role in children’s learning, as children rely on their metacognitive processes to plan, monitor and evaluate their understanding of performance, both in the classroom and beyond. When children approach a learning activity, they draw on different kinds of knowledge. They’ll have knowledge about themselves, knowing their own strengths, challenges and attitudes towards learning, and they’ll also have knowledge about strategies. So, knowing which methods or tools work best for them. And they’ll also have knowledge about the activity, understanding what the activity involves, and what’s needed to succeed. Children with stronger metacognitive skills tend to perform better in school. And teaching metacognition directly also seems to improve learning across different subjects.

Metacognition can help children follow instructions. So, a child who notices that they might have missed a step can pause and check or ask for clarification, which likely helps them complete activities more successfully. Metacognition can also help a child improve their study habits. So, a child who realises they lost focus during a lesson might review the material later. Or, if they notice that their homework goes better when they’re not tired, they might try to change when they do their homework. And finally, metacognition helps children reflect on their learning, for example by thinking through what they just learned. So, “I think this is true because”, can help a child strengthen both their understanding and their memory. Generally, metacognitive ability develops and improves as children grow.

Young children often find it quite hard to explain how they think or learn, because they’re still developing their understanding of abstract ideas like memory, problem solving, or learning. Still, even very young children can show signs of metacognitive awareness. So, for example, children as young as five can often tell when they remember something correctly. So, they might be willing to bet more candy on their answers when they’re right. And even three- and four-year-olds show some awareness of what they know, especially during activities that they enjoy. As children grow their self-awareness becomes more accurate. So, younger children often tend to overestimate their abilities, and they might have this “I can do anything” attitude, which can actually be quite helpful as it gives them the confidence to try new things. But as children mature, the judgements about what they know and what they can do, become more realistic.

Metacognitive skills develop alongside other areas like cognition, language, emotion, social understanding, and over time, children become more aware of what helps them learn best, what motivates them, and whether new information has really stuck in their mind. Parents and caregivers can help children develop their metacognitive skills that is, their thinking about their own thinking, through simple, everyday activities. So, when you’re cooking or playing a game or doing a puzzle together, you can try asking open-ended questions that get your child to explain their thinking as an example, “can you tell me more about why you think that?” Or “how did you figure that out?” And these kinds of questions help children understand that learning happens through effort and reflection.

If your child feels frustrated when learning something new, you might remind them of times they learned a skill that once felt difficult, like riding a bike. You can ask them “what helped you get better”? This helps them see that learning takes time and practice. that learning takes time and practice. And you can also ask questions that get them to think about their process, such as “how will you know when your drawing is finished?” Or, “what could you try if this doesn’t work?” For older children, you could also encourage reflection after completing a task by asking, “what went well?” or “what could you do differently next time?” Questions like these can help make children more aware of how they learn, and they can help make them more confident in their ability to figure out how to learn new things and solve new problems.

Educators can help students develop metacognitive skills by teaching these skills directly and giving students chances to practice them. Newer and difficult tasks can often feel overwhelming, and teachers can encourage students to ask themselves questions like: “What’s making this hard?” “Have I done something like this before?” “What support can I use?” “Are there any resources I can use?” “Can I ask my friends or my teachers?” And after completing a task, reflection helps students see what worked and what didn’t. And teachers can guide this process by asking: “What did I learn that I didn’t know before?” “What mistakes did I make and why?” “What was easy or difficult?” “How could I do better next time?”

Encouraging students to review feedback, self-mark work and compare their results to success criteria also helps support metacognitive reflection. We don’t fully understand all the reasons for differences between children in metacognitive skills. We do know that environment and experience play a big role when children are actively taught how to plan, monitor and reflect on their learning, and have chances to practice these skills, they tend to get better at them. Metacognitive ability also depends on what a child already knows, and how much mental energy they have available for the task. For example, a six-year-old who loves building with Lego might be great at spotting exactly where construction went wrong. But the same child might find it much harder to analyse their mistakes in a subject they know less about. And because children’s metacognitive skills vary and can change depending on the situation, teaching and supporting these skills explicitly, can help level the playing field.

Supporting all learners to think about how they learn may help reduce achievement gaps in the classroom. I find metacognition very fascinating for a few different reasons. And so first of all, it’s such a broad and interconnected concept. Thinking about thinking is closely linked to how we learn, how we study, and how we understand ourselves. Because it’s connected to so many parts of cognitive and social development, it’s quite tricky to study. But that’s also what makes it so interesting. And by understanding metacognition better, we can get a fuller picture of how all these different factors work together to support children’s learning. Second, even though research shows that teaching metacognitive skills seems like a very promising avenue to boost learning and to potentially reduce attainment gaps, we still don’t fully understand why it works or how to teach it most effectively. So, I think that there’s a lot of promise here if we can uncover the mechanisms behind these positive effects, we could provide clearer and more specific evidence-based guidance for teachers and caregivers to help support children’s learning.