Nathan Burns is a clear authority on the subject of metacognition. He has spent his career combining teaching and leadership roles with research into the theory. His latest book feels like a genuine fusion of deep theoretical knowledge and the realities of classroom practice. This is, in no small part, due to the wonderful array of contributors he has assembled for the book.
At the heart of the book sits Nathan’s commitment to surface the understanding and in-tangible practice of apparent expert teachers. He acknowledges that these teachers make things look effortless, able to ‘get students to write pages and pages when they set essay style questions’ or to get them to ‘know how to revise’. With such complexity at the heart of these issues, what teachers need is a gradual build up to fully grasping the full beast that is metacognition. Nathan starts us off with our first tentative steps by referring back to his own definition of metacognition – a definition that is relatable due to its simplicity and closeness to what I imagine is the lived experience of most teachers. He says ‘Metacognition is the little voice in your head that constantly evaluates and informs your action’. He then steps us through the key components of the theory – planning, monitoring and evaluation, either building our confidence in our growing understanding or reassuring us that what we were quite sure about is indeed the case. But, as we all know, it’s rarely as simple as digesting and applying a definition. Nathan closes out the introduction with a dose of realism – metacognitive abilities are domain specific rather than general. Sadly for me, this is a periodic reminder of the hours, days and weeks I spent earlier in my career trying to build metacognition in pupils in a general sense. I can still now remember moving the handle on a wheel of fortune style display to show pupils that we were now ‘being metacognitive’. It felt odd then and now, with the availability of ever-increasing bodies of research, feels completely bizarre. Nathan’s reminder took me back to that place for a moment and then luckily, thrust me straight into Chapter 1!
a genuine fusion of deep theoretical knowledge and the realities of classroom practice
With 14 chapters from a hugely impressive line up of educational minds, this review would be three times the length at least if we commented on every chapter. What follows is a commentary on my favourite two chapters, based entirely on my own areas of interest and current thinking. Of course, your personal context, prior knowledge, professional concerns and interests will dictate the chapters that speak (or in my case, sing) to you the most. I urge a full reading, even if certain chapter titles grab your attention over others. Each one is a part worthy of a dedicated read but is simultaneously a building block of a greater understanding.
Jonathan Firth – Chapter 1
Jonathan Firth’s chapter is excellent. He begins by setting out his position that writing is both cognitively and metacognitively challenging. Not only do writers have to make selections from an ever-increasing toolbox of techniques and tools to meet a purpose but they also have to monitor and evaluate, in an ongoing way, how successful they are being at doing just that. Firth invites us to reframe how we consider the relationship between thinking and writing. They are not linear, he says, yet often we insinuate to students that they are. When I reflect on my own teaching of writing, I have to admit that thinking is often the precursor to writing. In reality, as adults, we write and think at the same time with the process being a constant back and forth exchange. Another point that Firth makes is that there is value in students writing about their own interests. This is something that I have always felt is susceptible to being over done (in particular in Primary schools). If motivation comes from success then surely, we should be choosing writing contexts that are likely to facilitate and illuminate the features of success. Too often, I think we confuse enthusiasm for motivation. There is something more sustained about motivation which, I think, is where success comes in to create a kind of momentum. Having said all that, Jonathan Firth, as if reading my mind, then goes on to explore how writing can be improved with a metacognitive approach, acknowledging the role that success plays in the motivation conundrum.
The first thing that Firth suggests is ‘reading better’. He says that we should be spending time really unpacking authorial choices, attempting to draw attention to the writer’s thinking, or at least, draw attention to the fact that deliberate choices are made in writing! This is something that Tara Magee and Nicola Mansfield have recently done lots of excellent work on for the PiXL network in a bid for students and teachers to see Reading and Writing as ‘English’ and not as two divorced disciplines. The chapter then tackles the ‘nuts and bolts’ – the features of writing that have an undeniably functional role to play (although their role is certainly not limited to functionality). Here, Firth writes about knowledge (of the subject), grammar, spelling and punctuality. As young writers develop, they build an increasingly expert understanding of these elements and subsequently make more precise and deliberate choices about their uses. This is a kind of routine to adaptive expertise. As writers develop an understanding of how routines of writing can be adapted, they become more cognisent of why and how these decisions are enacted and in so doing, develop their metacognitive capacity.
The final element that Jonathan Firth comments on is structure and style. It is not enough for us to teach students to mimic structures and styles. We need to teach them about them but also about the purposes they serve and the intents that underpin them. This is an early introduction to metacognitive thinking. As with all forms of adaptive expertise, once the routine is achieved, writers have greater working memory capacity to work on finding the variations cued by contextual influences such as intent and purpose.
Because writing occupies working memory so fully, monitoring the success of your writing throughout the process is a real challenge. This is Jonathan Firth’s opening point to his section on metacognitive monitoring. Firth argues that a key strategy here should be the teacher stopping and promoting reflection by the students at key points. He argues that this is a necessary stage that precedes students being able to do this themselves. He also suggests that as students get better at doing this for themselves, it ceases to interrupt their flow and simply becomes a natural part of their writing. The chapter offers a practical tool that we can use to help students learn to manage the competing cognitive load of maintaining focus on the target while also formulating the written word. Jonathan Firth suggests a target diagram, in which students write the most important aim in the central circle and then more peripheral intended details in the concentric circles that follow. We are provided with the useful example of the editing process here. If the word count is too high, the diagram will support students in knowing where to cut words from – not from the most important section! Firth suggests that we spend time with students devoting more of our shared attention on the planning process. I think that this can helpfully be thought of as collecting ideas, organising ideas and manipulating ideas. By thinking about the process in these three distinct stages, we can create a mental model for students of what an expert planner does. It is not simply a case of gathering ideas together and then putting them down on paper. The best writers get a sense of what they want to say, the themes and patterns of their writing that they want to draw out and put all of those together. Then, they organise those ideas into something that serves the communicative purpose of the piece of writing. Then, they manipulate that structure and organisation so that they are still showing fidelity to the purpose and intent but so that they are also able to create something new and original, something that reflects a deeper layer of intent and creativity. It is through this scaffolded approach to creativity that writers become able to choose and use ideas they have in a conscious way.
Patrice Bain – Chapter 13
Patrice Bain is one of the most interesting people in education in my humble opinion. I have never met her or spoken to her (although I very much hope to one day) but her unwavering positivity about education and its potential and her passion and love of education shine through everything she does and I think that in this way, she is an example to all of us. This, along with her expertise, is what drew me to her chapter.
Patrice Bain’s chapter is concerned with teaching students how to learn, how to study independently and how to ensure that what has been taught is actively and consciously learned by students. She sets out a central aim of designing tasks that facilitate and value retrieval as well as thinking. She acknowledges that we need to get students thinking hard about content at strategically spaced intervals to ensure that the retrieval strength of that knowledge is protected and increased. We have to know what we know if we are going to be able to direct our thinking to where it is most needed. This is why Patrice Bain suggests ‘feedback-driven metacognition.’ This is where students are given frequent low or no-stakes opportunities to retrieve information before a test so that when they get to the test, they know what they know reliably and they know what they don’t know. This avoids the ‘illusion of knowledge’ which then results in disappointingly low exam outcomes.
Improving metacognition in the way Bain describes is about imbedding the kind of knowledge monitoring we want students to do into the tasks we ask them to do. Bain suggests four strategies to accompany low stakes quizzes to assist with this:
1. Put a star if you know the answer and a ? if you don’t
2. Answer all the starred questions without your books or notes
3. Look up all the ? using your notes
4. Verify all the starred answers are current
By doing the above, students can see how many more questions they are able to remember how to solve each time they take a test. This kind of self-monitoring is a key part of metacognition.
One other key point that Bain makes and that I am a particular fan of is that it is a good idea to teach students how they learn and to refer to this often in the context of the classroom decisions you are making. Bain also reminds us to read widely on the topic of metacognition and to apply what we read. This underscores the value of professional curiosity and should remind all of us of the purpose and worth of what we are doing. It is worth getting that little bit better at it and it is worth thinking deliberately about how to do that.
Closing remarks
Nathan Burns really has pulled together some excellent voices on the subject of metacognition. Narrowing down my two favourite chapters was tough and, in the end,, I based it on the number of notes and highlights I had made on each chapter! That criteria alone shows that what has been curated is something that should stir the thinking of all readers, no matter their background, experience level or school context. A full reading is what we would recommend but perhaps more importantly, a thorough reflection and period of thinking about what this book means for you in your context is vital. Well done Nathan Burns and the fantastic team of contributors that make this book such a joyous education to read.
Nathan’s book can purchased here
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