Metacognitive Strategies In Learning

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In today’s constantly changing technological world, it is not possible for individuals to acquire all existing knowledge and predict what knowledge is likely to be necessary for the future. Therefore, individuals should have skills to recognise, evaluate, and where needed, reconstruct their existing knowledge (Gunstone, 1991, cited in Georghidaes, 2004). Accordingly, one of the major goals of education should be to arm students with skills necessary for the critical evaluation and acquisition of new knowledge, with a commitment to life-long learning. In fact, development of such metacognitive skills, which involve planning, monitoring, and evaluating, helps students function as active and effective members of society after graduation, since…show more content…
Actually, by using skills such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating, metacognitively active students can decide on appropriate cognitive strategies in their learning and use resources effectively. In addition, these students are aware of their comprehension and task performance and can make judgements about the outcomes and their thinking and learning. At this point it is necessary to distinguish between cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Cognitive strategies are task-related strategies such as note-taking, summarising, and outlining, while metacognitive strategies emphasise planning and monitoring one’s learning and being aware of which strategies are suitable for use across academic tasks (Hattie, Biggs, & Purdie, 1996). Therefore, cognitive strategies are used to achieve cognitive progress, whereas metacognitive strategies are used to monitor it (Flavell, 1992). Parallel to this idea, Forrest-Pressley and Waller (1984) propose that cognition involves the actual processes and strategies used by students, while metacognition involves what a student know about his or her cognition and the ability to control…show more content…
knowledge of the various cognitive strategies that can be used for learning, thinking, and problemsolving). Metacognitive experience, on the contrary, involves conscious experiences, which can be either cognitive or affective, pertinent to an ongoing cognitive processes. Metacognitive experiences are likely to occur in situations that provide opportunities for thoughts and feelings about one’s own thinking to arise (Flavell, 1992; Pintrich, 2002). Thus, metacognition, which can simply be defined as deliberate, conscious control of one’s cognitive processes, enables students to plan, sequence, and monitor their learning in a way that directly enhances their performance (Schraw & Dennison, 1994; Schraw & Moshman, 1995; Schunk, 2004). However, students do not always use metacognitive skills with regularity (Bandura, 1993). Results of many studies show that motivational beliefs significantly affect the use of metacognitive strategies employed by students (Al-Ansari, 2005; Dembo & Eaton, 2000; Neber & Schommer-Aikins, 2002; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990; ShuShen,2002; Tung-hsien, 2004; Valle et al.,

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