Some ideas about "Metacognition"

Metacognition, which was first coined by John Flavell, consist of metacognitive knowledge and experiences or regulation. It simply means “thinking about thinking.” Others considered it as "learning how to learn"

Thinking which involves active awareness and control over cognitive processes engaged in learning also meant metacognition. This consist of Metacognitive knowledge, which refers to acquired knowledge about cognitive processes, and knowledge that can be used to control processes.

There are 3 categories of metacognitive knowledge:
1. Person variable – knowledge about how human beings learn and process information and individual’s knowledge of one’s own learning process

2. Task variables – knowledge about nature of tasks and type pf processing demands that it will place upon the individual

3. Strategy variables – awareness of the strategy one is using to learn a topic and evaluating whether this strategy is effective

1. Meta-attention – awareness of specific strategies so that you can keep your attention focused on the topic or task at hand
2. Meta-memory – awareness of memory strategies that work best for you

To develop metacognition, teachers need to employ some teaching strategies. Students can also be guided to make predictions about information to be presented next based on what they have read, relate ideas to existing knowledge structure, develop and ask questions of themselves, about what’s going on around them.

Based o metacogniiton, learners can be classified. The novice learners have limited knowledge in different subject areas, are satisfied at just scratching the surface; hurriedly gives solution to the problem, employ rigid strategies that may not be appropriate to the task at hand, attempt to process all information they receive, they do not examine the quality of their work, nor stop to make revisions

Expert Learners have deeper knowledge in different subject areas. Teachers should first try to understand the problem, look for boundaries, and create a mental picture of the problem. They should also design new strategies that would be appropriate to the task at hand, select important information to process, able to breakdown information to manageable tasks, and check their errors and redirect their efforts to maintain quality output