Metacognition: a bridge between cognitive psychology and educational practice

Theory Into Practice, Autumn, 2004 by Deanna Kuhn, David Dean, Jr.

Although they have their differences, educational practitioners and academic researchers largely agree on a broad goal: to develop in students the kinds of thinking skills that will prepare them to contribute to a democratic society. But the two groups largely speak different languages. While educators frequently talk about critical thinking as an objective, researchers have largely avoided the term, preferring constructs that can be more precisely defined and measured. How do we connect critical thinking to modern research on cognition and learning? The authors propose the construct of metacognition as having the potential to bridge the concerns of educators and researchers whose work is addressed to the development of skilled thinking. Given its growing importance in studies of cognition and learning, teachers would benefit from an understanding of the mechanisms involved in metacognition and how best to foster it.

THEY HAVE THEIR DIFFERENCES to be sure, but today's educational practitioners and the academic theorists and researchers who concern themselves with education would likely agree on a broad goal: to develop in students the conceptual skills that will prepare them to contribute to a democratic society. Academics are inclined to decry the growing emphasis on "objective" standardized tests and to endorse "education for understanding" (Gardner, 1999) and development of the learning and thinking skills that will equip students to thrive in tomorrow's society (Bereiter, 2002; Kuhn, in press). Practitioners have long appeared to be of the same mind. The mission statement of the school district in which one of us was recently a teacher reads, "... our students will graduate with the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to be successful contributors to our democratic society." These educational goals can be traced back at least as far as Thomas Jefferson, who proclaimed (in a personal communication to W. Jarvis in 1820),

   I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of
   the society but the people themselves: and if we think
   them not enlightened enough to exercise their control
   with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not
   to take it from them, but to inform their discretion
   by education.

The Great Divide

The challenge comes, of course, in trying to implement these lofty goals, and here we find academics and practitioners navigating largely unconnected paths. Academics pursue their agendas isolated from the demands of the classroom, while practitioners are pressed to find methods that work. and quickly. Even if they had the time and energy to seek them out, research findings are not disseminated in a way that facilitates practitioners" consumption of them. And practitioners are unlikely to do so, having acquired the attitude, conveyed from their preservice training onward, that research studies are not going to be of any direct help--findings are inconsistent and far removed from classroom realities. Scant attention in the preservice curriculum to educational research, and to the tools needed to evaluate it, is perhaps the strongest meta-level message to practitioners as to its value.

Bereiter (2002) argues that this state of affairs needs to change dramatically. Teachers must become collaborators in the research enterprise, in close contact with knowledge building in their field, seeing themselves and being accepted as part of the endeavor. Educational reformers, Bereiter says, "are likely to fail in even their immediate objectives if they do not become more deeply engaged with the unsolved problems of pedagogy" (p. 421).

A major "'unsolved problem of pedagogy," we would add, is exactly what are the higher order thinking skills that will equip students to participate in modern democratic society'? Practitioners traditionally have ignored the question. "'We till know good thinking when we see it," their attitude has been, "so let's focus on finding effective techniques to foster it." Increasingly, it is becoming clear that this stance will not suffice. We cannot effectively teach cognitive skills in the absence of very clear and precise understandings of what those skills are (Kuhn, 1999, in press). Given the prevalence of the "'we'll know good thinking when we see it'" stance, educators today are more likely to agree on promising educational activities and settings for fostering thinking than on what the thinking skills are that they seek to induce in these settings.

Educators must collaborate with researchers in achieving these understandings, creating the need for a different kind of collaborative role for the academic researcher. In the past, when educators have turned to academics for assistance, the role the academic has been asked to play is that of technician: Here is what we want students to know; can you advise us of the most efficient means for them to acquire it? Instead, both practitioners and academics need to collaborate not just with respect to devising means but also in better defining ends--the nature of the intellectual skills that need to develop.