Cognition and Metacognition in Education

*Murat Tezer*

## **Abstract**

Metacognitive skills help students develop skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, leadership, and responsibility. This chapter aims to examine the concepts of cognition, metacognition, metacognitive strategy, and metacognitive skill within a theoretical framework and to reveal the place of these concepts in education. In the research literature review method was used. In the light of the results obtained based on the research findings, it was determined that metacognitive strategies help students improve their cognitive skills during the learning process and are related to academic success. This research reveals the need to emphasize the importance and place of metacognitive skills in education, to teach students strategies, and to guide them when and where to use them. Additionally, students need to gain appropriate experiences and practice to develop their metacognitive skills. Metacognitive development begins at an early age and continues throughout the teaching process; therefore, it is very essential to carry out activities that support metacognition, especially at preschool and primary school levels. The general conclusion is that developing metacognitive skills increases students' cognitive competencies and makes them responsible for their learning, which in turn enables students to become more independent learners and increases their overall academic success.

**Keywords:** metacognition, cognition, metacognitive skill, strategy, awareness, metacognition in education

### **1. Introduction**

Today, with the increase in knowledge, rapid changes and developments occur in social life, and many areas of human life are affected. With this effect, individuals' learning and information-processing skills improve. While it was previously considered sufficient to simply memorize and repeat information, now comprehension and interpretation skills have gained importance. Individuals can analyze the information they learn, establish relationships between different information, and associate this information with their own experiences [1]. In the fast-paced and ever-evolving world we live in today, it is not enough for students to simply access information. They also need to process information effectively and apply it in a variety of study areas. This includes the ability to synthesize information from different sources, think critically about complex problems, and communicate ideas effectively [2].

Learning to learn is a skill supported by the contemporary education system. It is thought that the individual who acquires the skill of learning to learn uses versatile thinking and questioning skills. The individual who uses questioning skills will carry out thinking activities on his/her behaviors and thoughts. As a result, the individual will be able to organize his metacognitive knowledge by thinking about his/her thoughts. Metacognition refers to the knowledge and awareness of an individual's thinking processes, the ability to reflect on and adjust an individual's thoughts, control this process, and use learning strategies consciously. This concept enables students to actively guide the learning process and achieve better results by using effective learning strategies [3]. As the individual's metacognitive awareness increases, his perception of himself and his environment will differ, and this awareness can contribute to the raising of conscious, questioning, and intellectual individuals. Efforts to raise conscious individuals in education have begun to progress rapidly on a more meaningful path with the emergence of the concept of metacognition and the studies carried out on this subject [4]. High-quality instruction not only teaches students domain-wide knowledge but also provides metacognitive knowledge. Metacognitive knowledge helps students understand their learning processes and enables them to use learning strategies more effectively. Students need to understand how they learn, what strategies are most effective for them, and how they can be better organized [5].

### **1.1 Cognition and metacognition in theory**

According to the information processing approach, learning occurs through the flow of information within sensory recording, short-term memory and long-term memory elements. Executive processes have an important place in the process of ensuring and directing the flow of knowledge within mental processes. Executive processes; they are the memory system elements that monitor and direct what information will be processed in the learning-teaching process, how this information will be processed, and control the learning-teaching process order. It involves being aware of one's own thoughts, understanding how these thoughts influence learning, and making conscious efforts to regulate and control cognitive activities; it is the regulation and control of these processes to increase remembering. Metacognition includes the skills of (a) being aware of one's own learning and memory capacity, (b) knowing the qualities of the learning strategy to be used, (c) planning for the study to be done, (d) using effective learning strategies, and (e) monitoring and evaluating the learning situation [6].

The first words on the subject of metacognition and therefore the emergence of the concept of metacognition began to be put forward by Flavell in 1976, and this concept was used to describe the individual's own cognitive processes and knowledge and the knowledge that can keep cognitive processes under control. The subject of metacognition includes the individual's awareness of what he knows, that is, "metacognitive knowledge", the subjects that the individual can do, that is, "metacognitive skills", and what the individual knows about his cognitive ability, that is, "metacognitive experience". If we want to explain metacognition using the words Flavell first used, we would have to say that it is "cognition and knowledge about cognitive phenomena" [7]. Flavell [8] presented metacognition and cognitive monitoring in a model of stages. Cognitive monitoring takes place via "activities and interactions" between these four structures: (a) metacognitive knowledge, (b) metacognitive experiences, (c) goals (tasks), and (d) activities (strategies).

Another important part of Flavell's [8] model was metacognitive experiences that enable people to notice, direct, and evaluate their thought processes [8]. While these

### *Cognition and Metacognition in Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114857*

experiences help improve learning and problem-solving skills, they also contribute to a better understanding of one's mental processes. These metacognitive experiences can occur before, during, and after a cognitive activity [9]. Flavell's definition of metacognitive components states that metacognitive knowledge is one's information about his or her cognitive abilities, learning, and universal characteristics of learning. On the other hand, he considers metacognitive experiences as control and regulation processes, such as a person actively monitoring his cognitive process and his/her thinking consciousness.

While Flavell states that metacognition can sometimes be unconscious and emotionally charged, Brown et al. [10] have the opposite idea. They suggested that the management of cognition is a purposeful and emotion-free element. Brown [11] claimed that it involves "purposeful efforts toward learning and problem-solving and actions of predicting, controlling, monitoring, testing, coordinating." He divided the management of cognition into two main categories: (a) knowledge of cognition, which involves the individual thinking consciously about his cognitive abilities and actions, and (b) regulation of cognition, which are activities related to self-regulatory mechanisms in the learning or problem-solving process. Although he considered these two elements as two separate areas of research, he stated that they were "very closely related to each other" and constantly supported each other. Knowledge of cognition is what an individual knows about a particular sequence of events or a particular thing. The second element, regulation of cognition, involves the individual thinking about, monitoring, and controlling mental processes. It is the operational aspect of cognition management [10, 12]. Metacognition includes knowledge and regulations regarding cognitive activities during the individual's learning process [8]. Metacognition is defined as one's own awareness of his/her metacognitive processes and strategies [13].

Metacognition, which is related to the individual's self-reflective feature, draws attention to how individuals think and understand during the learning process and how he/she assimilates and understand information [14]. Thus, metacognition helps the individual develop the thinking mechanism to fully learn and understand. As Vygotsky [15] emphasized, when the student is aware of his thinking processes, he gains control over how he learns. A few terms have emerged related to the concept of metacognition, which we have used widely for years:

These are metacognitive beliefs (the capability to evaluate and question one's own beliefs and thoughts and manage them through a metacognitive approach), metacognitive awareness (the capability to recognize and consciously manage one's own mental processes, ideas, feelings, and beliefs), metacognitive experiences (the ability to notice, monitor, and evaluate one's own mental processes, thoughts, and perceptions), metacognitive knowledge (the capability to be conscious, knowledgeable about an individual's thoughts, beliefs, memory thinking processes, and learning strategies), feeling knowing, judging learning, theory of mind, meta-memory, metacognitive skills, higher-level skills, meta-components, monitoring by understanding, learning strategies, heuristic strategies (cognitive methods and approaches used to generate new and creative solutions), and self-regulation [16]. Veenman et al. [16] tried to explain these concepts by considering metacognitive knowledge and skills separately. They stated that metacognitive knowledge reflecting our learning process may be true or false and that this self-knowledge may be closed to changes. They emphasized that metacognitive skills have a feedback mechanism and are open to transformations.

Schraw and Moshman [7] further examined Brown's distinction between metacognition and the regulation of cognition in his model. Metacognition is discussed under two general headings: self-evaluation and self-management. Self-assessment parallels the structure called cognitive management knowledge by other researchers. This category includes the individual's personal opinions about his or her knowledge and abilities, such as memory abilities, problem-solving capacity, or other cognitive abilities. Self-management looks like the adjustment of cognition. It expresses the organizing of cognition in action. They are mental procedures that help organize the elements of problem-solving. These processes include plans made before starting a task, adjustments made while working, and reviewing the process afterward. These two elements of cognition management processes are interrelated [17].

Tobias and Everson [18] discussed cognitive management as a combination of knowledge and skills. This component can be examined in three main areas. Metacognitive knowledge is a kind of monitoring, which is one's learning processes and the controlling of these processes. A prerequisite for metacognitive processes is monitoring. Students intensively engage in monitoring activities in learning environments where they gain new knowledge. Information monitoring can be thought of as the capability to understand what is known by an individual and what is not known. Students who accurately analyze what they have already learned and what they have not yet learned perform better at focusing their interests and other cognitive sources on the material to be learned. As a result, they developed their model by adding information monitoring and control to the metacognition model consisting of three components [18].

### **1.2 Difference between cognition and metacognition**

When the definitions of metacognition are examined, the expression cognition is often encountered. Therefore, some comparisons have been made to better understand the relationship between the concepts of cognition and metacognition. One of these comparisons is that the concept of cognition deals with the individual's ability to comprehend any situation by being aware of it, while metacognition is not only cognition but also being aware of how he comprehends this situation and thinking about how he learned [19]. According to another comparison, while cognition includes strategy and actual operations, metacognition includes what the individual knows about his cognitions and his ability to control these cognitions [20].

According to Yıldız [21], while cognition is the individual's knowledge of a situation, metacognition deals with the individual's awareness of his or her level of knowledge. To give an example, Gama [22] stated that the ability required to understand a text by reading it is different from understanding how much one can comprehend this text. The knowledge about solving a mathematical problem is cognitive, but the individual's ability to compare the ability to read the text with the ability to solve a mathematical question and determine which one is better is metacognition. Just as the definitions of cognition and metacognition are different, there are also differences in their functions. In this context, the function of cognition is to find cognitive solutions to solve problems and achieve the goal. The task of metacognition is to regulate the cognitive work of a person while solving problems or to manage the learning task [20].

### **1.3 Metacognitive awareness**

Metacognitive awareness is the individual's awareness of his/her cognitive processes and the capability to control these processes. Thanks to this awareness, the

### *Cognition and Metacognition in Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114857*

student can understand how he learns, what strategies he uses, and when he needs help. Metacognitive awareness helps the student make the learning process more effective and enables them to develop learning strategies. Metacognitive awareness is the state in which the student has information about how much of the field knowledge he has mastered in the learning process, which personal learning strategy he should use and why he uses it, and what he has done and should do until he reaches his goal [23]. According to Demir and Doğanay [24], metacognitive awareness is expressed as planning the work to be done by focusing attention, being able to evaluate the stages in the learning process, and making arrangements, in short, learning to learn. In other words, metacognitive awareness is one's own awareness of his/her knowledge about what, how, and by what means he/she can learn in the learning process [25]. As can be understood from the definitions, metacognitive awareness can generally be expressed as thinking about one's work, structure, and knowledge of the cognitive system [26, 27]. In this context, it can be said that metacognitive awareness can be expressed as "cognition about cognition" [28].

### **1.4 Metacognitive knowledge**

Pintrich et al. [29] stated that metacognition is divided into two basic structures, which are (1) metacognitive knowledge and (2) metacognitive control and regulation. Some researchers have stated that metacognitive control and metacognitive regulation are different structures. What is expressed here as metacognitive regulation is the concept of self-regulation. These concepts can be discussed together and separately in the literature. Conceptually metacognition, compared to self-regulation, has been introduced to the literature before, and studies have been carried out in this field [30]. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, educational and developmental psychologists proposed that individuals have different ways of monitoring, controlling, and regulating their learning [31–33]. According to Pintrich et al. [29], under the metacognitive knowledge dimension, students' declarative, process, and situation-based knowledge is grouped as knowledge of cognition and cognitive strategies. Metacognitive knowledge can be expressed as one's knowledge about one's cognition and is located in long-term memory under a topic that has previously been learned in different ways; for example, it is a term related to awareness of learned information such as geography, mathematics, and physics. Metacognitive knowledge is a more static concept than monitoring and regulation and is the student's awareness of what he knows or does not know. Metacognitive knowledge; it also includes one's self-knowledge, task recognition, and strategy recognition, which are among the variables that affect cognition. Knowing oneself means being aware of one's attributes, but also knowing one's differences from other people.
