Direct Instruction of Metacognition and its Benefits to Motivation and Science Learning

Metacognition, or knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena such as monitoring and regulation, has been positively associated with academic performance and motivation (Flavell, 1979; Hacker et. al, 2000; Swanson, 1992; Wolters, 1998). It develops naturally into adulthood but there are large individual differences in its use and development, especially during adolescence. Although the development of metacognition is critical to problem solving and learning, it is rarely explicitly taught as a set of skills in school. We tested whether an instructional intervention designed to teach middle school students the declarative and procedural skills of metacognition increases student motivation, scientific reasoning, and conceptual understanding of physics. Prior to the intervention, we administered a series of pre-test assessments to analyze the students'  metacognitive habits, motivation, and physics misconceptions. During the two-month intervention, students in two physics classes were randomly assigned to either the control group, which received extensive problem-solving practice, or the experimental group, which received more limited problem-solving practice along with explicit metacognitive instruction and materials that prompted the use of metacognitive skills such as planning, monitoring, and evaluation. After the intervention, students completed the original set of assessments along with an additional scientific reasoning task. Results show that those who received the direct instruction of metacognition had significantly higher levels of motivation and performed better on conceptual physics and scientific reasoning tasks than those who didn’t receive direct instruction of metacognition.