What is Metacognitive Theory? (Flavell)

hi everyone chris here from

helpfulprofessor and today we're going

to talk about

metacognitive theory so let's jump

straight into it

with a quick comparison between

cognition and metacognition

so we use the term cognition to talk

about the fact that we think and

how we think whereas when we use the

term metacognition

we're talking about the awareness of our

own cognition

so we'll often use the definition of

metacognition thinking about

thinking so let's have a look at a

couple of examples of

metacognition we might be using our

metacognitive skills when we catch

ourselves procrastinating

so procrastinating might be an example

of cognition

where we're sitting here sitting around

sort of thinking about everything except

what we really need to be focusing on

where

we're delaying tasks because we don't

want to do them

a person with metacognitive strategies

can catch themselves procrastinating and

say

i know that i'm procrastinating right

now and therefore i'm going to do

something about it i'm going to address

this weakness in my own thinking

we might assess our own knowledge on a

situation so we often as teachers will

call this prior knowledge of a student

but a student who is teaching themselves

something might say

okay i already know steps one two and

three but i don't know step four yet so

i'm gonna skip to step four

or they might say okay and i'm doing a

lesson on multiculturalism here's a

couple of cultures that i'm already

aware of and i can

use that as a springboard to start

learning about more cultures or more in

depth about the cultures that i already

know of so that's

assessing our own prior knowledge in

order to

do better at tasks next one being aware

of our own negativity

so again we'll catch ourselves being

negative so negativity is the cognition

and the metacognition is saying i am

aware that i'm in a negative frame of

thought right now and i'm going to do

something to

actively address it actively change it

and then the last one reflecting on how

we performed a task

so we might stop at the end of a task

and say well what cognitive strategies

did i use whilst performing this task

did i use my own prior knowledge to help

me to

work on my task as an example so

there are a couple of examples of how we

use metacognition or think about

thinking

and usually after we've thought about

our thinking we can then

improve upon our thinking so

metacognition is all about

becoming better thinkers and better

learners

so mental cognitive theory was

sort of conceived of by a person named

flavel

and there's sort of three main steps in

his development of metacognitive theory

the first step in 1971 he came up with

the term

meta memory which he then later on

turned into

the term metacognition and in the next

slide i'll give you some definitions of

meta memory

and then in 1976 he wrote a book about

metacognitive skill development in

childhood and he came up with three

stages of skill development i'll show

you those stages in a minute as well

and then in 1979 he came up with four

classes of metacognition

and so there were four different types

of thinking about thinking

i'll give you one slide on that four

classes of metacognition

but to be honest i don't think he did a

very good job of coming up with these

four different classes so i'll briefly

produce introduce it to you and if you

want to go into more depth on that

you can take a look at the blog post

which is in the description below

so uh flavell's concept of metamemory so

this is his first

step in developing metacognitive theory

he said well metamemory or what we're

now calling medical ignition is

has to be intentional so one way that we

know that it's metacognition or

meta-memory is

it's intentional we're intentionally

self-questioning

the second one is it's foresighted so we

need to plan out

our thinking or our plan of attack

before we

go about doing a task so oftentimes when

we're

using metacognition we'll use it in

advance we'll pause and say okay what's

the best thing that i can do

now what's the best way in which i can

tackle this task should i use

mathematical skills or should i

bring in some prior knowledge like i

talked about before

and last one it's used to accomplish a

goal so usually when we're using our

meta

memory or metacognitive strategies we're

using them in order to usually improve

or get better at

doing tasks okay so then he moved on and

he talked about his three stages of

metacognition he's using the term

metacognition now and it talked about

them in child development

and flavell said well this as a child

the child sort of develops metacognition

in a series of steps and the first step

is

to intentionally think so we might see

a child for example searching for their

favorite toy

it's one of the first things you might

as a as a parent notice go oh my

my child is developing some cognitive

skills here because

even though this the toy is not within

their eyesight or they've got another

toy they've put it down and they're

going well where's the one i really

really want the one that i really really

like

so they're developing that skill of

storing information

next is recall and this is intentional

organization of knowledge so one of the

simplest ways we do this and

you'll often see this with young

children sort of around three or four

years of age they start playing games of

memory

um even the actual card game memory

where you flip

over a card and you try to remember

where you know the ace of spades was

because next time you flip the next days

of spades you can

you can match them up in that game of

memory so the next step

is not just being able to store

information

but store it and recall it with

intentionality with

organization in our minds and then the

third step is systematic strategies

things like using the menomic devices

self-questioning and thinking aloud

somanomic devices might be sort of when

you

come up with a song or a phrase to

remember something

so um oftentimes uh here's an example of

a monomic device when

i'm working with my students and i'll

teach them how to write paragraphs i'll

use them to use

teal paragraph structure where each

sentence has

a topic and then the next sentence is

explanation

and then the next sentence is example

and the fourth sentence is a linking

sentence to the next paragraph so there

we're using

letters to remember something in the

future t-e-e-l

just as a quick example okay so

then we moved on in 1979 into flavell's

four types of metacognition

as i alluded to earlier i don't think

that these are very

well thought out just in my personal

opinion

so i'll show you these four types and if

you need to learn more about them say if

you're writing an

essay on metacognition or you're giving

a lecture in a

as a teacher and metacognition and you

need to know about these four types

you can go to that blog post that i've

linked below and i've outlined for you

the four types but just as a general

quick introduction there he says there's

four types metacognitive knowledge

metacognitive

experiences metacognitive tasks and

strategies or activities

these sort of bleed into each other and

there's it's a bit murky about which

ones which

metacognitive knowledge oftentimes will

refer that to things like

whether or not we personally believe

that we have the ability to

complete a task or use our metacognition

so do we have an internal locus of

control or an external locus of control

metacognitive experiences that's often

got to do with

the ways in which we inter we the ways

in which we

uh activate our metacognition all the

ways in which we

we put it into practice metacognitive

tasks

so oftentimes when we're using our

metacognition we'll say

well what is the end goal and then our

metacognitive strategies will

uh differ based upon what our end goal

is that's what we

that's sort of our focus on making the

cognitive tasks and then strategies or

activities flavelle provides

a list of different metacognitive

strategies and i've already provided a

few little examples of that before

things

like the ability to use your prior

knowledge in order to

start start up a task based upon

your building upon what you already know

so advantages of metacognitive theory

one of the big advantages especially for

myself as a teacher is it helps to

explain

to students how to think you can say

well let's what metacognitive strategies

can we use right now in order to

attack this task tackle you know

something in a task maybe

a meta-colony strategy will have to be

reflection let's reflect upon why we

failed last time

and then implement some strategies to

make sure we don't fail this time so

it's a really good way of breaking down

how to think about things

psychologists as well will often use

this

and then the next one is it does

highlight the flaws of behaviorist

approaches to the way we think so

behaviorists people like skinner and

pavlov

they used to think that thinking was

mainly about

measurable ability to repeat

things to back to a teacher for example

so

uh oftentimes it would be repetition uh

just hardcore just trying to memorize

things repeat things and remember them

repeat things and remember them

and then metacognitive theory kind of

says well it's not thinking isn't just

about repeating and remembering and

being able to to do a task at will it's

about

being able to think something through

it's all about

processes of thinking things through so

that we develop

the skills to know how to learn

okay disadvantages of metacognitive

theory it is very hard to measure

meta thoughts or metacognition so

how are we going to measure when

someone's used it and how they've used

it the only way that you really can

is by using qualitative methods

asking someone well what strategies did

you just use in that point in time so

it's very hard to use

quantitative data to measure

a person's ability to use metacognition

it's also there's a bit of debate within

uh within academia about whether

metacognition is really conscious or

unconscious so while flavell said that

they're both

it can be conscious and unconscious so

you can consciously reflect on your own

thinking and you can also

unconsciously be reflecting on your own

thinking other people say well maybe

it's only a conscious thing it can only

be

a conscious activity so there's a bit of

lack of clarity around whether

metacognition is conscious or

unconscious

okay so just lastly a few applications

so why do we need to know about

metacognitive theory of course teachers

need to know about it because they need

to provide their students these

metacognitive strategies

one of the best things that we can do as

teachers is not just teach

information but also teach people how to

think and how to learn

so they can go out after we've finished

teaching them and they can use those

strategies to continue to learn for the

rest of their life

psychologists as i mentioned can use

these strategies to help their clients

i'll often say that give clients

tasks so they'll say okay go away this

week your task is

to to record what your thought processes

were at the end of the day

how you felt about the day what was

going on when you were thinking these

negative thoughts as an example

and then learners can use them to

improve their study techniques so once

you've developed metacognitive skills

you can become a much more effective

studyer so you can get better at

completing exams for example and you can

even study for less time

and still do better in exams because

you've developed metacognitive

strategies the ability

to think through how you think so you

can take shortcuts

or take the most direct route to

reinforcing knowledge in your mind

so that is metacognitive theory it's a

it's a it's a difficult theory it's not

one of the easiest theories that

you can you come across but one of the

nice things about metacognitive theory

is it gets us thinking about how we can

educate people by giving them skills to

learn

skills on how to think and learn which

is i think

the the key reason why you might want to

know about metacognitive theory

as an educator or as a psychologist or a

psychiatrist