What’s the ‘meta’?

 Lots of words are used to explain theories of education, and in fact the language is often the part that puts teachers off. Our time is valuable and for many the idea of doing lots of reading and research beyond all the planning, marking and data analysis we have to do is just a no. However, understanding how we can help our students become independent learners is obviously a workload win! 

‘Metacognition’ is a term often used in school and in teaching advice at the moment. It is often described as ‘thinking about your thinking’ which is not a particularly helpful description for some of us. Understanding its difference to other areas of our teaching can help us plan better lessons. 

Research shows that transferable successful independent learning involves three key processes:

1. Cognition

2. Metacognition 

3. Motivation

We have all of these things in our tool set at my school, it’s just being clear which tool is for which and therefore how we can utilise them together to help our students learn. 

Cognition:

This is about how students learn - so Rosenshine’s principles, recall activities, structuring and differentiating learning. Understanding the Simple Memory Model (a focus in our school this year) all fits in this topic. 

Metacognition:

This is students' understanding of how their own brain works, how to optimise their brain and which tools best work for them as an individual. We provide them with tools such as graphic organisers, De Bono’s 6 hats, Costa’s Habits of mind etc. The ‘systems’ and ‘practice’ elements of VESPA from the A Level Mindset strategies fit in here too. In year 7 enrichment students learn about 8 areas of Metacognition in enrichment including discussions of diet and sleep.

Motivation:

This is where the rest of VESPA sits - the vision, effort and attitude. Some of the Habits of Mind fit here too - for example persisting and finding humour. 

We need to use all 3 of these together in order to get well rounded, independent students. It does not matter how well we’ve structured our lessons if our students do not understand what works for their brain and are not motivated. The most enthusiastic of students are soon going to lose their love of learning if they don’t understand how their own brain works, or have lessons that do not help them recall past facts and understand where their current learning fits in with their past knowledge. 

Teaching great lessons and increasing student independence is not a magic trick or difficult, though it is learnt through experience. If we can just keep in our minds these 3 strands to integrate into our planning and use the tools we have in school, we can help our pupils to continue to make excellent progress, and cause ourselves less stress and work as they become increasingly independent learners.