Metacognition

Problem solving is a complex behavior. Regardless of how much experience or knowledge a problem-solver has, each new problem situation is in some ways unique, requiring creative application of strategies for posing, solving, and resolving the problem at hand. Metacognition is the awareness and understanding of one's self as a thinker. Expert problem-solvers, and effective thinkers of all kinds are usually self-aware thinkers. They plan strategies for attacking thinking problems. When they hit blind alleys, they stop, analyze, and reflect. Effective thinkers pose alternatives for themselves and choose among them. Students' ability to reflect on their thinking "as thinking" and to analyze their own strategies are their metacognitive skills.

Surprisingly, metacognitive awareness is not uniformly developed in students. In reading, even college age students are unaware of how they can approach texts, plan their studying, or work through problems that have stumped them. In writing, inexpert writers may follow one procedure again and again without flexibility, even in the face of persistent failure.

However, teachers can promote awareness of strategies for thinking by engaging their students in activities that require reflection. Students can keep and share a "process log" where they write about the processes they employ in writing, reading, or problem-solving generally. As students share their entries, they gain an awareness of alternatives to their own processes, and the teacher can direct them to consider specific strategies. Teachers, as expert readers and writers, can also make their thinking strategies explicit by "thinking-aloud" with students as they read and write together. Group work or discussion time can also regularly include a "process observer," namely a participant who agrees to pay attention to how the interaction progresses and to report to the group an analysis of its process. Activities like these, that require students to make the sometimes-invisible work of thinking visible and explicit, help all students to understand that as thinkers, they are in charge. More purposeful, flexible, and creative problem solving is the result.