Personalise learning

1. Metacognition
Susan House
Nigeria 2022

2. How good are you at thinking?
Jack is looking at Anne. Anne is looking at
George. Jack is married. George is single.
Is a married person
looking at a single person?
a) Yes.
b) No.
c) Can’t be determined.

3. And the correct answer is ...
Is a married person looking
at a single person?
We know:
Jack is married.
He’s looking at Anne.
George is single.
Anne is looking at George.
We don’t know:
If Anne is married or not.
We can deduce:
If Anne is single, the married person looking at her is Jack.
If Anne is married, she is the married person looking at single
person, George.
So… in both cases a married person is looking at a single person.
So the correct answer is A Yes.
Jack is married
Anne ? we don’t know
George is single

4. Let’s try this one
Ben digs a hole in the garden to plant a new
tree.
The root ball of the tree is quite big, so he
digs a hole 2m wide, 3m long and 4m deep.
How much soil is in the hole?
THINK! 2x3x4 = ?

5. What is metacognition?
Meta
• is an affix.
• means in itself.
• it is a self-
referential term.
• it turns back on
or into itself.
Cognition
• is the mental action or
process of acquiring
knowledge and understanding
through thought, experience,
and the senses.
• refers to the mental or
internal processes of learning.

6. Metacognition is…
 learning about learning, or
 thinking about thinking, or
 knowing about knowing, or
 learning about thinking and knowing about learning…
We talk about metacognition in educational theory because we are interested
in how students come to know things. We call this the learning paradox.
How do people learn? How do they think?
How do they reach conclusions? How do they reason?
How do they apply logic? How do they rationalize?
These are all metacognitive questions

7. Why is metacognition important in education?
We just need the formula and BINGO!
Perfect teaching! Perfect learning! But ….. Perfectly impossible!
• Metacognition is a mental process.
• Mental processes are hidden from view.
• There is no magic formula.
But …
• It is useful to explore and investigate metacognition.
• We can help our students learn more efficiently if we are aware of some of
the processes involved in learning.
• We can help them be more metacognitively aware of what they are doing.
Metacognition is taught. It doesn’t just happen, magically.

8. “Children must be taught how to think not what to
think.” Margaret Mead
What do I know?
What don’t I know?
What do I need to find out?
What don’t I need?
How can start?
What skills can I use to perform
this task?

9. Metacognitive strategy
• What influences my thinking about this?
• How far is my thinking evidence based?
• How rational are my arguments?
• Did I challenge my thinking by imagining an opposite view?
• What resources did I use to inform your thinking?
• What strategies did I use to assess the quality of the
resources?
• What further information do I need?
• Where will I get this information from?
Metacognitive thinking relies on schemata

10.  Cognition and metacognition are different types of
thinking.
 Metacognition is thinking about the way you are
thinking. It is much more reflective and requires a
deliberate action of deep thought, not a rapid quick
fire response.
 Metacognition relies on schemata, which are the
things you already know.
 Schemata can be chunks of knowledge and strategies
or skills for dealing with how to find, assess and use
this knowledge.
Summarise so far

11. The 2 square (Emma Worley)
How many numbers are there?
2
2
2
2

12. • 4 (4 numbers of the number 2)
• 1 (all the same number)
• 8 (adding up)
• 2,222 (placing together)
• 16 (2 to the power of 4 = multiplying)
• No numbers at all! This relies on the idea that numbers are abstract and what we have
here are symbols to represent numbers!
How is this dependent on schemata?
• You thought of different ways of answering the question.
• You activated existing schemata and you applied them to the question.
• A very young child would just count the numbers and say, “Four!”.
• This is because she has no other schemata to access, she just knows how to count
objects.
• She doesn’t know about multiplication and numbers to the power of, or abstract symbols
The 2 square – possible answers.
Conclusion
The way we solve puzzles depends the schemata we have and how
good we are at accessing them. It depends on how metacognitively
aware we are.

13. Thinking skills (Richard Fisher)
Collaborative or
connected thinking
P4C
Information
processing skills
Enquiry
skills
Reasoning
skills
Creative
thinking skills
Evaluating
skills

14. Information
processing skills
Enquiry
skills
Reasoning
skills
Creative
thinking skills
Evaluating
skills
Collaborative or
connected thinking
P4C
gathering
information
making meaning
from information.
thinking in order to
engage in a process of
finding out.
inferring, making
informed judgements,
making reasoned
decisions, explaining,
creating ideas and playing around with thoughts and
hypotheses. Thinking outside the box. Divergent thinking.
learning how to assess ideas,
beliefs, thoughts, …. for their
value.
Richard Fisher:
these dispositions and
attitudes are fostered
when children are
working cooperatively or
in connected thinking

15. What collaborative or connected
thinking?
• We tend to think of think of thinking as an individual
pursuit. Something we do inside our heads.
• In other words, our metacognitive model is of
something private and personal.
Fisher says this is wrong.
• Thinking is a collaborative, collective and connected
activity.
• People don’t (perhaps even can’t) think alone.
• They think with other thinkers.
• They form a community of thinkers.

16. Is it possible to
think of nothing?
Is it possible to
have a fair race?
Where does time
go when it’s
over?
Do dogs know
they are dogs?
What are numbers
and why can they
go on for ever?
If an animal could talk
should you eat it?
If I had a different
name would I be a
different person?
When did I start
to think?
How do I know I
am not dreaming?
Why can’t I have
a pain in my
pocket?
What’s the difference
between telling a lie
and keeping a secret?
Children’s questions show us they engage in
metacognitive thinking (P4C)

17. (P4C) Philosophy for children
P4C is NOT a debate. P4C is NOT competitive.
P4C is NOT about finding answers. It’s about exploring questions.
• Teacher sets the stage with a context.
• Children work together to create their own questions.
• Each group or pair poses related questions.
• The whole group chooses the question they want to explore.
• Build the ideas around the question through dialogue.
• The children learn to think together, to connect their thinking.
• Final reflections on how well the pupils reasoned their ideas.
The teacher’s role: facilitate, support, scaffold, moderate,
encourage,…
It is not to give answers.

18. A thought experiment The Ship of Theseus
Which is the Ship of Theseus?
A = original ship B = ship with new pieces C = ship with mended pieces
Things to think about: What gives something its identity?
The parts? The whole structure? The history?
Individual or collective memories?
When does something stop existing?
When does something start existing?