The role of metacognitive knowledge in learning, teaching, and assessing

Theory Into Practice, Autumn, 2002 by Paul R. Pintrich

In addition to general self-knowledge, individuals also have beliefs about their motivation. These include judgments of their capability to perform a task (self-efficacy), their goals for completing a task (learning or just getting a good grade), and the interest and value the task has for them (high interest and high value versus low interest and low value). Although these motivational beliefs are usually not considered in cognitive models, there is a fairly substantial body of literature emerging that shows important links between students' motivational beliefs and their cognition and learning (Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Snow, Corno, & Jackson, 1996). It seems important that just as students need to develop self-knowledge and self-awareness about their knowledge and cognition, they also need to develop self-knowledge and self-awareness about their motivation.

Although self-knowledge itself can be an important aspect of metacognitive knowledge, it is important to underscore the idea that accuracy of self-knowledge seems to be most crucial for learning. That is, we are not advocating that teachers try to boost students' self-esteem (a completely different construct from self-knowledge) by providing students with positive, but false, inaccurate, and misleading feedback about their strengths and weaknesses. It is much more important to have accurate perceptions and judgments of one's knowledge base and expertise than to have inflated and inaccurate self-knowledge (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). If students do not realize they do not know some aspect of factual, conceptual, or procedural knowledge, it is unlikely they will make any effort to acquire or construct new knowledge. Accordingly, we stress the need for teachers to help students make accurate assessments of their self-knowledge, not inflate their self-esteem.

Implications for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing

Metacognitive knowledge can play an important role in student learning and, by implication, in the ways students are taught and assessed in the classroom (Bransford et al., 1999). First, as previously noted, metacognitive knowledge of strategies and tasks, as well as self-knowledge, is linked to how students will learn and perform in the classroom. Students who know about the different kinds of strategies for learning, thinking, and problem solving will be more likely to use them. After all, if students do not know of a strategy, they will not be able to use it. Students who do know about different strategies for memory tasks, for example, are more likely to use them to recall relevant information. Similarly, students who know about different learning strategies are more likely to use them when studying. And, students who know about general strategies for thinking and problem solving are more likely to use them when confronting different classroom tasks (Bransford et al., 1999; Schneider & Pressley, 1997; Weinstein & Mayer, 1986). Metacognitive knowledge of all these different strategies enables students to perform better and learn more.