Metacognitive Strategies

As used in the word metacognitive, the prefix "meta" means transcending or more comprehensive.

Cognition is thinking.

Metacognitive strategies are strategies that involve more than just thinking enough to do something. They are a set of tactics used to help you think about how you are thinking or how you are studying.

It can also be thought of as regulation of thinking and an awareness of personal strengths and weaknesses. (Schmitt, M. C., and Newby, T. J. 1986)

Components of Metacognition

In their article entitled Metacognition: Relevance to Instructional Design (1986), Schmitt and Newby discuss components of metacognition.

The two major components of metacognition are knowledge and regulation.

"For metacognitive awareness, the learner needs three kinds of knowledge:

•  Declarative knowledge of both self (I learn best by ...) and of the task characteristics (I will need to understand and memorize ...)

•  Conditional knowledge deals with when and why to use certain strategies. "This type of text usually consists of main ideas and supporting details. I know that outlining and summarizing informational text is a good strategy for organizing and remembering the information because it forces me to identify the important details, so it should work well in this case."

•  Procedural knowledge deals with how to execute the selected strategy. In the general purpose study strategies section of this course, it was said that young children often do not have the ability to correctly use the strategies of underlining or highlighting. They tend to be unable to determine what information is the most important, so they underline everything. They would not have the procedural knowledge to use these two strategies.