What are the benefits of meta-thinking?

Meta-thinking helps students to become independent learners

Meta-thinking practices help learners to monitor their own progress and take control of their learning as they read, write and solve problems in the classroom.

Meta-thinking has a positive impact on learning

Meta-thinking makes a unique contribution to learning over and above the influence of intellectual ability. Learners who use metacognitive strategies are likely to be able to achieve more. Research shows that improving a learner’s metacognitive practices may compensate for any cognitive limitations they have.

Meta-thinking is useful across a range of ages and subjects

Metacognitive practices are useful for all learners from primary level upwards. Using metacognition improves students’ academic achievement across learning domains. Metacognitive skills help students to transfer what they have learnt from one context to another or from a previous task to a new task. This includes reading and text comprehension, writing, mathematics, reasoning and problem-solving, and memorising.

Meta-thinking is not expensive to implement

Unlike many other educational interventions, implementing metacognition does not require expensive, specialist equipment or changes to school infrastructure. The only cost of implementing a metacognitive approach is the cost of professional development. Later we will look at practical ways you can introduce metacognition into your school.