Metacognition

Metacognition: Clark and Mayer define Metacognition as the mind's operating system (Clark and Mayer 2003). Flavell (1979) writes that"Metacognitive knowledge consists primarily of knowledge or beliefs about what factors or variables act and interact in what ways to affect the course and outcome of cognitive enterprises."

In learning, Metacogntion often refers to the set of skills that manages the learning process. These include skills such as planning (the design of the learning process), monitoring (comparing actual progress to the desired one), self assessment (the ability to correctly evaluate one's own knowledge level), and debugging (identifying sources of failure and overcoming those).

This definition leaves much room for interpretation. Most researchers point out a dichotomy in the nature of metacognitive knowledge: Metacognition includes both monitoring of understanding (what do I know? knowledge about cognition) and monitoring of the learning process (managing the problem solving process, regulation of cognition) (Brown et al. 1983, Bransford et al. 2000, Schoenfeld et al. 1992).

Brown et al. (1983) summarize well these two aspects: "Metacognition refers to one's knowledge and control of the domain cognition." The Help Tutor project deals with these two types of metacognitive knowledge: - The Self Assessment Tutor component supports knowledge about cognition. It helps students monitor their knowledge level and identify knowledge gaps. - The Help Tutor component supports regulation of cognition. It helps students apply their help-seeking skills appropriately.

Metacognitive knowledge is domain independent to a large degree. However, domain-knowledge cannot be ignored. For example, it is hard for students to evaluate their knowledge level without having adequate konwledge about the desired performance and skills. Also, As Brown et al. (1983) note, it is often difficult to distinguish between the metacognitive and the cognitive level. To what extent are strategic skills, which are relevant to specific domains, metacognitive? For example, self-explaining one's answers can be views as a domain-level skill or a metacognitive skill.

• Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school. National Academy Press.
• Brown, A. L., Bransford, J. D., Ferrara, R. A., & Campione, J. C. (1983). Learning, remembering, and understanding. In Handbook of child psychology (pp. 77-166). New York: Wiley.

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school. National Academy Press.

• Clark, r. c., & Mayer, r. e. (2003). E-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.
• Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and Cognitive Monitoring: A New Area of Cognitive-Developmental Inquiry. American Psychologist, (34), 906-11.
• Schoenfeld, A. H. (1992). Learning to think mathematically: Problem solving,

metacognition, and sense-making in mathematics. In D. Grouws (Eds.), Handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 334-70). New-York: MacMillan.