**3. Institutional metacognition as a strategy for educational change**

Currently, the educational change is understood as a complex, long-term process that must then be analyzed in detail, favoring its understanding so as to be able to anticipate in an adequate way the contingencies associated with this process (planning, management, project evaluation); this is always from a collaborative perspective incorporating all the members of the institution. The processes of change in education have an institutional dimension that forces them to develop with a certain structure and order, so that they have a systemic and institutionalized character, based on a process of understanding and decision-making that involves the whole educational community [37].

The change becomes substantive only if we manage to activate reflective and critical processes based on the deliberate analysis of emerging issues of the institution, paying particular attention to the way in which information is managed. In this sense, processes such as educational self-evaluation understood as the process of systematic and analytical collection that implies, on the one hand, the exchange of data related to education process [38] and, on the other, a necessary step for the development of the educational institution.

Changes are processes of social construction that from a situational strategic logic are associated to cognitive processes of problematization, prioritization and design of improvement actions, which must be precisely monitored by the different teams. These processes are linked to what some authors have defined as organizational learning (Senge [39]). Understanding the school as a learning organization implies an institution that allows itself to manage a significant and transcendent change in its patterns and actions in the face of the dynamic and systemic needs of its educational community [34, 40]).

As Bollen points out [41]), "the school improvement only is possible if the school, as an organization is able to learn, not only in the case of individuals, such as teachers or administrators, but also in the way that the school can overcome ineffective behavior through close cooperation" (p.29). This shared metacognitive ability implies a process of monitoring of the own institutional cognition and includes activities of "planning, monitoring or knowledge of the understanding and performance of tasks, and evaluation of the effectiveness of the process and monitoring strategies" [42]. If we see the change processes as generators of knowledge, we must say that the processes of reflective monitoring play a key role in the development and improvement of metacognitive knowledge in the educational institution. At the same time, the knowledge seems to facilitate the ability to regulate cognition. The two are empirically related and can be integrated in the form of metacognitive theories, as representational frameworks of knowledge, in this case institutional.

management of knowledge uses the information produced by the members of the organization, converting the said information into an active capital that permits decision-making and

The IM is a relevant factor for the organizational learning, being that it promotes conscious and shared processes of knowledge between the members of the educational community and necessarily relates to the management of the knowledge, given that it allows determining information that can orient the processes of organizational change and clarifying unknown

Currently, the educational change is understood as a complex, long-term process that must then be analyzed in detail, favoring its understanding so as to be able to anticipate in an adequate way the contingencies associated with this process (planning, management, project evaluation); this is always from a collaborative perspective incorporating all the members of the institution. The processes of change in education have an institutional dimension that forces them to develop with a certain structure and order, so that they have a systemic and institutionalized character, based on a process of understanding and decision-making that

The change becomes substantive only if we manage to activate reflective and critical processes based on the deliberate analysis of emerging issues of the institution, paying particular attention to the way in which information is managed. In this sense, processes such as educational self-evaluation understood as the process of systematic and analytical collection that implies, on the one hand, the exchange of data related to education process [38] and, on the other, a

Changes are processes of social construction that from a situational strategic logic are associated to cognitive processes of problematization, prioritization and design of improvement actions, which must be precisely monitored by the different teams. These processes are linked to what some authors have defined as organizational learning (Senge [39]). Understanding the school as a learning organization implies an institution that allows itself to manage a significant and transcendent change in its patterns and actions in the face of the dynamic and

As Bollen points out [41]), "the school improvement only is possible if the school, as an organization is able to learn, not only in the case of individuals, such as teachers or administrators, but also in the way that the school can overcome ineffective behavior through close cooperation" (p.29). This shared metacognitive ability implies a process of monitoring of the own institutional cognition and includes activities of "planning, monitoring or knowledge of the understanding and performance of tasks, and evaluation of the effectiveness of the process and monitoring strategies" [42]. If we see the change processes as generators of knowledge, we must say that the processes of reflective monitoring play a key role in the development

aspects of the functioning of the organization to strengthen its effectiveness.

**3. Institutional metacognition as a strategy for educational change**

the resolution of problems [4].

8 Open and Equal Access for Learning in School Management

involves the whole educational community [37].

necessary step for the development of the educational institution.

systemic needs of its educational community [34, 40]).

The construction of an educational project or institutional development project implies necessarily the active fostering of a series of attributes in the educational community that implies the self-exploration and critical analysis of the school. The institutional metacognition understood as a shared cognitive act is extremely important in the understanding of the progressive complexity that the institutional management has acquired in the educational establishments. This is especially relevant if we view this process of educational development from the critical perspective, in which the study of the correspondence of the actions with transcendental principle and values becomes relevant [43].

The metacognition is an attribute that involves cognitive aspects as well as interpersonal, that is, to the person and their social environment, being necessary to establish effective interactive guidelines both for the community within the educational establishment and for its link with the external environment. It is a process of systemic approach in terms of its purpose to rescue the visions of all the members of the educational community [6].

This ability of institutional self-consciousness must sustain itself, furthermore, in a participatory dialog that permits cooperative exchange of information about the critical topics of development of the institution. The cooperation between people from this perspective of the situated cognition sets that the aspects of human cognition are inherent to the work contexts in which various people participate [44].

From a situational strategic logic, it is recommendable to enhance the self-consciousness in management of educational institutions. In this sense, the formulation of plans and associated projects implies commitments of action that emerge from a particular view at what the institution does, from a proactive and transformational direction.

As [27] point out, the learning potential "is maximized in contact with others, which makes it necessary to be nourished by reflective processes that return cyclically to the practice (…) It is also essential not to restrict the knowledge of traditional processes of inquiry, but to promote knowledge that arises from the experience of subjects as the central axis of their history" (p.7). In this sense, the educational change must necessarily imply a cognitive change, in the way that we must inquire about the development of our educational institution [45]. The vigilance and analysis about this school learning potential imply an inquiry and reflection of diverse aspects; which we want to improve our particular forms of conflict processing [6] and organizational learning [8].

Also, according to [46], there are subprocesses associated with organizational learning that are worth mentioning in this section. The systematic resolution of problems, experimentation of new approaches, critical memory of past experiences and transfer of knowledge are processes that management must actively and deliberately foster, thus encouraging the reflective and conscious action of the institution.

It is important to emphasize that this idea of change based on the learning of the educational organization and its teams is not limited to a specific group of people, but affects the institution in general, through a metacognitive training that allows access to a higher level of awareness that occurs in the institution. As [47] points out, it is necessary to know the school culture in order to be able to then transform it, and this shared knowledge is a good starting point for a global change in the institution. The approach is to promote new ways to be a school; to understand it as an organization that learns and implies new forms of management and school cultures that place its managers, teachers, and students as authentic protagonists of institutional making.

the educational improvement plans [51]) and institutional education projects [52]) stand out. Thus, it is proposed that the institutional metacognition must be applied in the way it is related with the management structures, adding the metacognitive component to each step of the improvement cycle: determination of the current situation, determination of the desired situation, design and implementation of the action plan, monitoring and evaluation [53].

Institutional Metacognition as an Improvement Tool for Educational Management

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.70992

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These steps, more than a linear sequence, correspond to a spiral of improvement in the management [54]. What characterizes this process is that at the end of each step of the improvement cycle the construction of meaning and analysis must imply a joint view between all of the community actors, so that a conclusion can be drawn up at the institutional level, having as its backbone the common convergences and perspectives of each aspect, but not discarding

The first step, called determination of current situation (see **Figure 1**), seeks to detect, analyze and problematize the main improvement needs of the institution. In essence, the central problems must be defined, identifying their causes and consequences for the community, with an emphasis on the impact on learning [54]. It is also relevant to ask if these situations are of recent origin or have crawled on for a certain amount of time, whether they affect all or part of the school community, whether they are permanent in time or arise during particular moments, and if there have been previous attempts to solve it, both in the organization itself

the dissent.

and in others with similar characteristics [55].

**Figure 1.** Institutional metacognition in a continuous improvement cycle (own elaboration).

Therefore, according to [48], the schools present the need to learn; therefore, it is convenient to analyze the obstacles that exist to be able to produce the said learning. This author emphasizes (op. cit) that an educational institution closed to learning, hermetic, comfortably settled in routines will inevitably repeat the mistakes of the past so that it will neither learn nor change.

To improve the processes of an institution, the development of the critical and transformative rationality over the traditional emphasis of the mere technical and practical role is vital [49]. In this way, institutional metacognition emerges as a tool that allows educational improvement, from the generation of a cooperative and trusting work climate, and through the conscious dialog, inquiry processes emerge about the most pertinent initiatives linking the different actors of the educational community. The reflection on the practice, thus, seeks to promote self-transformation through substantive changes in one's own practice, based on the questioning of everyday personal conceptions and discourse [50].

For [48], schools are institutions that tend toward routine, for which the institutional metacognition sets up, then, an inquiry method that seeks to break with the ways of doing and thinking of the school. It is positioned in a reflective transformative approach that questions those traditional practices that are reproduced in an uncritical form. The emphasis here is on the importance of knowledge management in educational establishments.

In this way, the IM encourages and maintains the change of the educational institution, serving as its base the strengthening of the democratic processes and the participatory management. For the educational managers, the support provided by the IM is relevant, due to the fact that the changes can be organized in cycles of improvement, which, being complemented by the participatory and reflective instances of this methodology, grants its greater meaning and relevance to the management.
