Metacognition and self-regulation approaches to teaching support students to think about their own learning more explicitly, often by teaching them specific strategies for planning, monitoring, and evaluating their learning.

Interventions are usually designed to give students a repertoire of strategies to choose from and the skills to select the most suitable strategy for a given learning task.

Self-regulated learning can be broken into three essential components:

• cognition - the mental process involved in knowing, understanding, and learning.
• metacognition - often defined as ‘learning to learn’; and
• motivation - willingness to engage our metacognitive and cognitive skills.

1. The potential impact of metacognition and self-regulation approaches is high (+7 months additional progress), although it can be difficult to realise this impact in practice as such methods require students to take greater responsibility for their learning and develop their understanding of what is required to succeed.

2. The evidence indicates that explicitly teaching strategies to help plan, monitor and evaluate specific aspects of their learning can be effective.

3. These approaches are more effective when they are applied to challenging tasks rooted in the usual curriculum content.

4. Teachers can demonstrate effective use of metacognitive and self-regulatory strategies by modelling their own thought processes. For example, teachers might explain their thinking when interpreting a text or solving a mathematical task, alongside promoting and developing metacognitive talk related to lesson objectives.

5. Professional development can be used to develop a mental model of metacognition and self-regulation, alongside an understanding of teaching metacognitive strategies.

Metacognition and self-regulation strategies are promoted in the New Zealand Curriculum, within the key competencies of thinking (developing different and useful thinking skills, including metacognition) and managing self (which includes ‘understanding yourself as a learner’).

Research based in Aotearoa New Zealand aligns with the global evidence base, noting that when explicitly taught and promoted by teachers, self-regulation and metacognitive strategies have notable positive impacts on achievement. Studies have also emphasised the positive impacts of dedicated professional learning for building the quality of teachers’ approaches to teaching self-regulation and metacognition strategies.

The average impact of metacognition and self-regulation strategies is an additional seven months’ progress over the course of a year.

Metacognition and self-regulation strategies can be effective when taught in collaborative groups so that learners can support each other and make their thinking explicit through discussion.

Self-regulation and metacognition strategies work through students monitoring and evaluating their own learning strategies. Some necessary components for successful metacognitive strategies might include:

• Explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies.
• Teachers modelling their own thinking to demonstrate metacognitive strategies.
• Opportunities for students to reflect on and monitor their strengths and areas of improvement, and plan how to overcome current difficulties.
• Providing enough challenge for students to develop effective strategies, but not so difficult that they struggle to apply a strategy.

Metacognition and self-regulation strategies are most effective when embedded in a school’s curriculum and a specific subject lesson. For example, teaching metacognitive strategies to self-evaluate an essay in history will prove different to a student evaluating their methods for mathematical problem solving.

Overall, the median costs of implementing metacognition and self-regulation strategies are estimated as very low. The costs associated with metacognition and self-regulation mostly arise from professional development training for staff.

The range in cost of professional development training, and the option to purchase additional materials and provide ongoing training and support can mean increased cost. Evidence suggests that the effectiveness of metacognition and self-regulation strategies is influenced by teachers’ understanding of how to develop students’ metacognitive knowledge. 

These cost estimates assume that schools are already paying for staff salaries, materials and equipment for teaching, and facilities to host lessons. These are all pre-requisite costs of implementing metacognition and self-regulation strategies, without which the cost is likely to be higher.

Implementing metacognition and self-regulation strategies will also require a small amount of staff time, compared with other approaches, as staff need to develop their own understanding of metacognitive and self-regulatory processes to model effective use of these strategies and skills to students.

Alongside time and cost, school leaders should consider how to maximise explicit teaching of metacognitive strategies by supporting teachers to use these approaches in their practice. 

Local research:

Sleeman, M., Friesen, M., Tyler-Merrick, G., & Walker, L. (2021). The effects of precision teaching and self-regulated learning on early multiplication fluency. Journal of Behavioral Education, 30, 149-177.

Wass, R., Rogers, T., Brown, K., Smith-Han, K., Tagg, J., Berg, D., & Gallagher, S. (2023). Pedagogical training for developing students’ metacognition: implications for educators. International Journal for Academic Development, 1-14.

Schofield, L (2012) Why didn’t I think of that? Teachers’ influence on students’ metacognitive knowledge of how to help students acquire metacognitive abilities. Kairaranga, 13 (1), 56-62.