Best Practice

Metacognition: Models for teaching, learning and behaviour

Pedagogy Skills In the classroom Lesson planning Retrieval practice & metacognition
Metacognitive approaches have great potential to boost student progress. In this five-article series, Helen Webb explains the teaching and learning model at Orchard Mead Academy and how it translates to classroom practice. In part one, she describes an integrated approach to metacognition
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Metacognition and self-regulation are rated by the Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit as “high impact for very low cost, based on extensive evidence” (EEF, 2021).

It is a golden thread that can be weaved into all aspects of our classroom practice. In this series of articles, I describe the rationale behind our whole-school teaching and learning model at Orchard Mead Academy, our behaviour for learning model, our recent professional learning, and how this offers an integrated metacognitive approach in the classroom.

 

Metacognition: A teaching and learning model

 

 

Our context

Orchard Mead has undergone significant changes since it was formed from Hamilton College in 2017. Hamilton had been rated inadequate by Ofsted and was subsequently placed into special measures. The school also faces additional challenges in that it serves a community with very different cultural backgrounds – we have high levels of EAL and students who are completely new to English; our students speak 47 different languages between them. Socio-economic deprivation levels are high, and behaviour can be challenging.

The strategies described in this series are all factors that have contributed to significant school improvement and a good outcome in our recent Ofsted inspection. However, they did not happen in a silo. We know that to learn we need to be in good physical health, be mentally well and have the right resources, strategies and a suitable environment to work in.

The effectiveness of our professional learning is enhanced because we also provide the supportive environment for both staff and students to flourish.

 

What is metacognition and self-regulation?

Self-regulation (in the context of learning) is the extent to which learners are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and of the strategies they use to learn. It describes how learners motivate themselves to engage in learning and how they develop strategies to improve their learning.

According to the EEF (2021), self-regulation can be broken down into three essential components that teachers need to know about to help their pupils to develop into successful learners. They are:

  • Cognition: The mental process involved in knowing, understanding and learning. By cognitive strategies we mean the skills like memorisation techniques (e.g. mnemonics and self-testing) or subject-specific strategies like using different methods to solve equations in maths.
  • Metacognition: The way learners monitor and purposefully direct their learning. Effective metacognitive strategies get learners to think about their own learning more explicitly, usually by teaching them to plan, monitor and evaluate their own academic progress. For example, checking that their memorisation technique was accurate or being able to select the most appropriate cognitive strategy for the task they are undertaking.
  • Motivation: Our willingness to engage our metacognitive and cognitive skills and apply them to learning. Motivational strategies will include convincing oneself to undertake and persevere with a challenging revision task now as a way of improving our outcomes and future wellbeing in the test tomorrow.

A key point highlighted in the EEF’s guidance report (Quigley et al, 2018), is that it is impossible to be metacognitive without having different cognitive strategies to hand or without possessing the motivation and perseverance to tackle the problems and apply these strategies.

Indeed, the first recommendation of the guidance report is that teachers should “acquire the professional understanding and skills to develop their pupils’ metacognitive knowledge”.

As such, our whole-school professional learning journey into metacognition began with an emphasis on understanding cognitive strategies and the introduction of a new whole school teaching and learning model and model for behaviour for learning that all staff know and use. This diagram sums up our approach:

 

Adopting this clear framework has given our staff a shared language to use when planning and delivering lessons. It is also the golden thread that provides a focus when assessing and monitoring the quality of teaching and learning.

Ultimately our teaching and learning model attempts to create a schema in the minds of our teachers about effective learning environments and what a good lesson at Orchard Mead Academy looks like. The clarity of expectations also supports staff wellbeing. I have worked in schools previously that do not have such a prescriptive approach to how we teach. However, in our context and on our journey of improvement it has had a very positive impact.

Our teaching and learning model and subsequent professional learning was underpinned by Rosenshine’s (2012) principles of instruction, an understanding of Willingham’s Simple Model of Memory (2009), and ideas around cognitive load (Sweller, 1988).

It evolved from a previous model that was heavily informed by Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby’s 2015 book – Making Every Lesson Count – which I have written about previously in SecEd (Webb, 2021). The book describes six interconnected pedagogical principles that provide a framework for great teaching:

  • Challenge
  • Explanation
  • Modelling
  • Deliberate practice
  • Questioning
  • Feedback

Our model was also informed by the EEF guidance report’s recommendations for metacognition and self-regulated learning and its seven-step model for explicitly teaching metacognitive strategies, which can easily be applied to different subject content (Quigley et al, 2018):

  • Activating prior knowledge
  • Explicit strategy instruction
  • Modelling of learned strategy
  • Memorisation of learned strategy
  • Guided practice
  • Independent practice
  • Structured reflection

Learning at Orchard Mead is underpinned by the philosophy that teachers and students should know explicitly “why” they are doing “what” they are doing and “how” they can do it more effectively.

This allows for our teachers (and students) to plan for, monitor and evaluate their learning more effectively. Consequently, both our teachers and our students were taught the rationale of how this model was constructed and were provided with a toolkit of cognitive strategies so that students can ultimately learn more and remember more. As well as the diagram for teachers (above), we also have a diagram for students setting out the approach:

 

Following the creation of this model, we now have two distinct threads to our current professional learning:

  • The Orchard Principles of Instruction: The knowledge and guidance of different teaching and learning strategies.
  • FAST: A program that aims to teach and sustain great behaviour for learning.

We advocate the same approach, whether we are teaching students or staff, teaching about pedagogy, subject knowledge or behaviour. This involves clearly defined outcomes and rationale; complex tasks are broken down into smaller steps and each step is practised separately. Those small steps, along with on-going feedback, correction and retrieval practice aim to build more complex schemata over time.

Professional learning is highly valued and significant time is dedicated to it. Whole school CPD takes place not only on the usual INSET days but also during regular two-hour professional learning sessions. This is accommodated by students going home at lunchtime once a month on Mondays. We also revisit and recap key themes during weekly 10-minute morning briefings and personalised support is offered to staff via our instructional coaching programme.

 

FAST: Behaviour for Learning

Our students are explicitly taught the following FAST “behaviours for learning”:

  • Follow the speaker
  • Answer questions well
  • Sit up straight
  • Take responsibility

FAST was inspired and adapted from a presentation at ResearchED by Southam College (Richter, 2021) and has already had a significant impact on improving students’ behaviours for learning and reducing the number of recorded sanctions for poor behaviour.

Most significantly it provides staff with a shared language and there is greater consistency in how behaviour is managed around the school. Our consistent behaviour, teaching and learning routines also provide the regular structure that many of our students are missing at home. This makes school expectations really clear as students are getting the same “diet” in every lesson with every teacher.

Students are explicitly taught these skills in assemblies, during form time and via their class teachers in “stop the clock” activities that take place during the first 15 minutes of subject lessons at intervals throughout the term.

Ultimately the four routines are to support students to learn and remember more. They also develop strong habits for life which support with self-control, confidence and resilience. They also show our students how to be polite, kind and respectful people.

As our students also understand “why” they are doing “what” they are doing in their lessons (both in terms of behaviour and cognition), they too are now developing their knowledge of themselves as learners, of subject-specific learning strategies, and of concrete ways to improve their own individual outcomes.

To encourage the same culture of self-development in our staff, we often refer to the well-known quote by Professor Dylan Wiliam: “Every teacher needs to improve, not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better.”

Consequently, a question we are repeatedly asked to reflect on and that I challenge you to ponder as you continue to read this series is not: “Do I do this?” But: “How well do I do this?”

 

Further information & resources

  • Allison & Tharby: Making Every Lesson Count: Six principles to support great teaching and learning, Crown House Publishing, 2015: www.crownhouse.co.uk/publications/making-every-lesson-count
  • EEF: Metacognition & self-regulation, Teaching and Learning Toolkit, last updated July 2021: https://bit.ly/3zJ5ruN
  • Quigley, Muijs & Stringer: Metacognition & self-regulation: Guidance report, EEF, first published April 2018: https://bit.ly/3zKVE7w
  • Richter: Improving behaviour through explicit teaching: The FAST approach, Southam College presentation at ResearchEd (via slideshare.net) 2021: https://bit.ly/3T4rumA
  • Rosenshine: Principles of instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know, American Educator, Spring 2012: http://bit.ly/2ZpbIqW
  • Sweller: Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning, Cognitive Science (12,2), 1988.
  • Webb: Making Every Lesson Count: Six pedagogical principles, SecEd, May 2021: https://bit.ly/3mjQucW
  • Willingham: Why Don’t Students Like School? A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. Jossey-Bass, 2009.

 

Further listening from the SecEd Podcast