»Metacognition

1. What is metacognition?

Metacognition is the awareness and regulation of one’s own thinking and learning processes. It involves recognizing what one knows and does not know; reflecting on cognitive strategies; and intentionally managing, evaluating, and adapting those strategies to improve problem-solving and learning outcomes.

1.1 Different types of metacognition

According to Ellis et al. (2014), there are three kinds of metacognition:

  1. Knowledge of strategy: Understanding learning strategies that work for an individual.
  2. Knowledge of task: Understanding of learning goals and their context.
  3. Knowledge of self: Understanding of one’s own strengths and weaknesses.

1.2 Parts of metacognition

Metacognition consists of two distinct but complementary parts:

  1. Knowledge of cognitionrefers to awareness of what strategies exist and when they are useful — for example, a student knows flashcards help with memorizing definitions, but concept maps are better for organizing theories.

Metacognitive knowledge or "knowledge of cognition" includes at least three different types of metacognitive awareness:

  • Declarative knowledge: knowledge about oneself as a learner and what factors can influence performance.
  • Procedural knowledge: knowledge about how to carry out strategies or tasks.
  • Conditional knowledge: refers to knowing when and why to use declarative and procedural knowledge (i.e., when and why to apply particular strategies).

For more information on knowledge, see our Helping Students Build Knowledge resource.

  1. Regulation of cognitionrefers to planning, monitoring, and evaluating learning processes – for example, a student pauses while reading to check if they understand a section and decides to reread if needed.

Metacognitive regulation or "regulation of cognition" contains three essential skills:

  • Planning: choosing effective strategies and allocating resources in ways that support successful task performance.
  • Monitoring: an awareness of one’s understanding and performance while engaged in the task.
  • Evaluating: judging the quality of the finished product/task performance and the effectiveness of the strategies used, including reconsidering approaches for future improvement.

2. Why focus on helping students improve their metacognitive skills and awareness?

There are several reasons why we should emphasize helping students develop their metacognitive skills and awareness:

  • Most other student issues can be improved by improving metacognitive skills, as these skills in turn affect other constructs vital to academic performance.
  • Instructors do not need to do much—even short reflection points are very effective. Just force your students to A) think about what and how they are doing and B) compare it to clear, instructor-provided markers that outline what/how they should be doing.
  • These skills will serve them well throughout their lives and careers, not just in college.

Research has shown that metacognition:

🧠 Self-Awareness & Monitoring

  • Builds awareness of strengths, weaknesses, and effective strategies.
  • Helps students monitor what they do and don’t know, so they can focus study on weaker areas.
  • Encourages accurate self‑assessment and confidence in learning.

📈 Academic Achievement & Learning Outcomes

  • Correlates with higher academic success and expert‑like learning.
  • Boosts achievement in courses and enhances independent learning skills.
  • Positively linked to problem‑solving ability.
  • Supports transfer of knowledge and skills to new situations.

⚖️ Strategy Use & Efficiency

  • Improves understanding, memory, and use of appropriate learning strategies.
  • Helps students choose strategies most beneficial to their learning.
  • Leads to more efficient use of time and faster task completion.

💪 Resilience & Autonomy

  • Strengthens resilience and reduces test anxiety.
  • Enhances autonomy by giving students control over their learning process.

📊 Evidence Base (Hattie, 2023 – see Visible Learning, n.d. in References)

  • Of the 33 subdomains in Hattie’s 252 predictors of achievement, 9 emphasize metacognitive/self‑regulated learning, 17 emphasize learning strategies, and 10 emphasize learning intentions.

3. What metacognitive skills are relevant to college students?

All metacognitive skills are important to college students (and any learners), but to highlight some:

  • Goal setting and planning
  • Evaluating own understanding and mastery of skills
  • Shifting/adjusting strategies when needed
  • Monitoring and evaluating study habits
  • Organizing, summarizing, or structuring material to aid understanding
  • Identifying and correcting errors and misunderstandings

Their lack of knowledge of metacognition might make it hard for them to realize a strategy is not working, to reflect on why it’s not working, etc.—making it hard to improve.

(A non-comprehensive list of metacognitive skills: adaptability/flexibility, concentration, error detection, goal setting, information management, planning, problem-solving, reading comprehension, self-awareness, self-correction, self-reflection, self-regulation, task orientation, transfer of knowledge).

4. Why do students struggle so much with metacognition?

Unfortunately, many students tend not to plan sufficiently or monitor their understanding while learning or studying and generally skip any reflection on their performance (e.g., what worked, what didn’t work, what I will do differently next time).

There are several reasons why metacognition is underdeveloped in students:

  1. Relevant brain structures have not yet fully developed (see our Our Students’ Brains resource)
  2. Many students only have experience with rote memorization and teacher-directed learning (i.e., they simply haven’t been taught!)
  3. Novices tend to overestimate their knowledge and understanding because of illusions of knowing, the Dunning-Kruger effect, unconscious incompetence, etc.
  4. Their focus on grades may make them prioritize short-term performance over long-term learning
  5. Many students function with chronic cognitive bandwidth depletion

5. Metacognitive activities, course design, and instruction

This list is by no means exhaustive but includes commonly-recommended activities to help students develop their metacognitive skills. It is also important to understand that many of these activities function best when combined with growth-mindset primers.

5.1 Activities and assignments

Provide opportunities for active metacognitive reflection and self-questioning by giving students prompts (for examples, see section 5.1.1) to reflect on their planning, monitoring, and/or evaluation of processes, assignments, assessments, etc. (e.g., exam, lecture, or assignment “wrappers”). These opportunities should be low-pressure and allow students to try, fail, and reflect. This builds metacognitive resilienceand self-awareness.

  • Example: a pre-exam wrapper where you ask students to create exam questions; predict what topics will appear on the exam; predict how much of the exam will be devoted to each topic; etc.
  • Tip: peer teaching or explanation forces students to reflect on their understanding of a concept.

These reflections can take just a couple of minutes and require almost no effort on the instructor’s part—the goal is mainly to get them to think about what they’re doing and to compare it to what they should be doing.

  • Have them predict their scores on assessments (e.g., exams) or assignments, then have them reflect on how accurately they predicted their score once grades are released. Discrepancies between expected and actual grades can be a helpful wake-up call.
  • Identify the 3-5 most important points of your lecture. Tell students that they should try to identify the three main points during the lecture. At the end, have them compare their points to yours. Ask them to provide a rationale for their chosen points.
  • Ask students to submit a reflection on a topic before reading a text/attending class/whatever and revisit the reflection afterwards to consider how it informed their thinking
  • Introduce a problem, think-pair-share on the strategy they would use to solve it, then share your strategy as instructor
  • Have them reflect on how they figured out an answer to a question
  • Encourage students to monitor progress against rubric criteria.
  • Conditional knowledge practice; Asking students to explain when and why they would use certain strategies.

5.1.1 Common Reflection Questions

How can you best prepare for class? What can you do in class to help yourself learn?

SWOT: what do you perceive to be your strengths and weaknesses as a learner; identify opportunities you may have to improve your cognitive skills in the coming weeks or months; identify potential threats that may prevent you from improving your cognitive skills in the coming weeks or months.

  • How much time did you spend working on this assignment/studying for this exam?
  • How did you prepare for the assignment/assessment? How did you study for this exam? What strategies did you use? (You can include a list of study strategies here and have students indicate which they used) What did you do well to prepare for the exam? What could you do differently to study for the next exam?
  • What went well? What could have gone better? What could you do to improve things in the future?
  • Review your solution/answer with the correct worked solution: I worked the problem correctly; I made careless mistakes; I do not understand this problem/I am not sure where I went wrong.
  • What kind of errors did you make? Where did you lose points? (You can list common errors; especially useful for courses that build/have cumulative final exams)
  • Did you do as well as you expected? Why or why not?
  • Based on the feedback, what do you thing your strengths are with your work?
  • Based on the feedback, in what areas do you need improvement?
  • Is there anything about the feedback that confuses you or you have questions about?
  • Rate your level of confidence answering this question: I have no idea (how to solve this problem); I am somewhat confident; I am very confident.
  • What was difficult for you in this assignment/exam? What was easy?
  • What is my first move and why that one?
  • What feels fuzzy? Can you name it?
  • Explain two ideas that you found confusing.

5.2 Course design

Design high-structure courses with clear expectations, frequent feedback, and regular checkpoints – this provides opportunities for them to reflect on their progress and also to understand whether they are meeting the goals they should be meeting. This teaches them self-monitoring and can help them recognize whether they need to shift strategies.

  • As part of this, scaffold assignments by breaking down complex tasks and allowing for reflection at each stage.

Help students set clear goals for studying by providing them with specific learning goals (e.g., “Understand how A and B are related,” “Explain when to use C instead of D,” etc.). Students’ goals tend to be vague (e.g., “get an A”—or more realistically “get a passing grade”), if they even set any at all.

Explain to students why they are doing certain assignments or assessments and how they help us decide whether (or to which degree) they have met the learning goals for the course, class, or module. This supports metacognition as well as motivation, as the transparency of the purpose of the task, the skills it builds, and the criteria for success (hello TILT) builds transparency and trust. This can also help them see you as partners in learning, rather than you strictly as a teacher and themselves as passive recipients of knowledge.

5.3 Instruction

Use think-aloud protocols as instructors to demonstrate how to approach tasks and reveal disciplinary reasoning and heuristics—models cognitive processes during problem-solving.

Explain not only why certain strategies or answers are right, but also why incorrect ones are wrong: Students may understand that their approach or answer was wrong but often need help understanding why it was wrong.

Provide regulation checklists—these can be task-based or generalized (e.g., reminders to pause and reflect their strategies and progress at regular intervals; prompts to think about what strategies they are using and if they are appropriate; self-questioning prompts to remind students to question their choices).

Additional Reading & Resources