What is meta-cognition and can we teach it?
Meta-cognition is one of those terms that gets bandied about in educational circles as if we all know exactly what it is. And we do: it's...er...thinking about thinking, isn't it? Ever since the Education Endowment Foundation cited meta-cognition and self-regulation as the second highest impact strategy teachers can use in the class room I've felt I should be a bit clearer about what it actually is. They describe it as follows: Meta-cognitive and self-regulation strategies (sometimes known as ‘learning to learn’ strategies) are teaching approaches which make learners think about learning more explicitly. This is usually by teaching pupils specific strategies [...]