Metacognitive Control

Study on Seneca

Complete the interactive activities in the Seneca app to work towards your CPD certificate.

Metacognitive Control

Metacognitive control is the action a learner takes based upon their metacognitive knowledge and monitoring.

Action

If the metacognitive monitoring process causes a student to notice that something is not going well, metacognitive control is the action or change that they undertake in order to tackle that problem.
It could involve changing their approach or strategy in some way.
Example: if a learner says “I’m stuck” then they have engaged in metacognitive monitoring, and if they say “now I’m going to give up” then they have engaged in a form of metacognitive control!

Teachers

Teachers will want to guide learners to more productive forms of metacognitive control than simply giving up.
Some of the most important ones include:
- Trying a different approach to the task.
- Allocating more time to the task.
- Asking a partner for help.
- Asking a teacher or classroom assistant to show them the technique again.
- Re-reading instructions or watching a help video.

How does Metacognition Play Out in Learning Situations?

Let’s look at a couple of concrete examples of how these three types of metacognition – knowledge, monitoring and control – play out in learning situations.

$Example 1$

Example 1

Let’s think about a 12-year-old learner who is tackling a long division sum as revision. He can’t quite remember what to do (metacognitive knowledge), and so he watches a YouTube revision video.

Example 1

Now the child is calculating the sum. He makes an error, but quickly realises it (metacognitive monitoring).

$Example 1$

Example 1

The child goes back and fixes the error (metacognitive control).

Example 1

The child realises that he is still finding these problems difficult (metacognitive monitoring) and chooses to complete another one for practice (metacognitive control).