Metacognition in Education, Essay Example

Coming to Terms With Sternberg’s Argument for the Significance of Metacognition in Education

In the article “Metacognition, abilities, and developing expertise: what makes an expert student?”, the author Robert J. Sternberg argues that, insofar as “metacognition is an important part of human abilities, which are, in turn, forms of developing expertise”, grasping what metacognition is and how to develop it becomes a crucial method in producing successful students. Accordingly, it can be said that Sternberg’s argument consists of three crucial points: firstly, he requires a coherent, robust and compelling definition of what exactly metacognition means; secondly, he has to tie this understanding of metacognition to the thesis that it is decisive in developing various skills; and thirdly, that one of the skills in which the value of metacognition is most clearly displayed is in learning and thus the production of successful students. However, as the following paper will attempt to forward, perhaps metacognition is given too much emphasis in this model, and thus functions as a kind of hopeful “cure-all” to questions of learning, when in reality the latter is much more heterogeneous a subject matter to be resolved through the emphasis on one concept – in this case, metacognition — at the expense of other pedagogical concepts. Furthermore, as acknowledged in the text itself metacognition itself remains too heterogeneous a concept to satisfy the important status it is conferred by the author.

Sternberg’s text is a professional academic text, intended for an audience of peers in the fields of pedagogy, psychology and the philosophy of education. Accordingly, it is a demanding text to come to terms with, to the extent that its arguments are highly specialized and nuanced, involving a great deal of complexity. Nevertheless, it is clear that Sternberg, as mentioned in the introduction, wishes to advocate for the importance of metacognition; at the same time, however, he makes note of the heterogeneity of metacognition itself. In other words, in explaining what metacognition is, Sternberg writes the following: “metacognition is diverse. It includes both understanding and control of cognitive processes.” (128) The author thus concedes that metacognition itself is not an entirely coherent definition, potentially suggesting many different definitions. Furthermore, these definitions are not only problematic in terms of what metacognition is, as Sternberg notes, that the understanding of metacognition is diverse, but also in applying some potential understanding of metacognition afterwards, insofar as this application is also in the author’s words diverse. To put in different terms, there exists a gap between theory and practice of metacognition: furthermore, it remains ambiguous, according to the author, what metacognition theoretically means as well as practically means.

For Sternberg, however, this ambiguity on practical as well as theoretical levels does not mean that metacognition is hopelessly obscure. Rather, the author claims the exact opposite: we need to better understand and separate the theoretical and the practical divide of metacognition. To effectively employ metacognition “strategies”, as Sternberg terms them, one must therefore make a key distinction: a central thesis of the text is therefore that to the extent that — in the context of success in school – successful learning strategies are not innate, but rather learned, understanding how we know what we know – which is a preliminary definition of metacognition that is presented in the text – is crucial to increasing success. As Sternberg phrases this argument: what he terms “school-relevant abilities” are “not some largely inborn, relatively fixed ‘ability’ construct, but rather a construct of developing expertise.” (132) Thus even though, as Sternberg notes, there are many ambiguities to the concept of metacognition, if we hold to the argument that learning skills can be developed and are not static, predetermined and unalterable, we must admit the significance of metacognition as a conceptual framework that, on the one hand, helps clarify what it means to know and learn, and, on the other hand, helps clarify how one can improve in knowing and learning strategies.

These are compelling ideas presented by Sternberg. Once we accept the initial premise that learning can be improved, that there are strategies to increase our educational skills, it seems to logically follow that metacognition becomes central to learning, since metacognition is about understanding how we understand. Nevertheless, there are perhaps two main problems to this argument. The first is a minor claim: the premise here perhaps too hastily discounts the various “inborn” factors in learning successes. For example, with the rise of neuroscience, genetics and various other materialist sciences, by rejecting what Sternberg terms the “inborn” abilities is also a discounting of some of the most compelling discoveries of our recent science. This is not to suggest that all these abilities are inborn: however, to set metacognition at odds with accounts of innate potential to learn is perhaps too drastic a step. In other words, could we not perhaps expand the definition of metacognition so as to also include these “inborn” factors of learning ability? Such an inclusion would still fit within the concept of metacognition, because there seems to be nothing inherent to the concept of metacognition itself that rejects “innate” learning abilites and strategies which are potentially of biological origin. This ties in to a second point of concern: Sternberg himself acknowledges the “diversity” of the concept of metacognition. Accordingly, he acknowledges a gap between metacognition in theory and in practice, as well as “fuzzy” uncertainties regarding what metacognition means on both the theoretical and practical sides of the concept. To the extent that the author holds this position, perhaps it is somewhat inconsistent to at the same maintain the significance of metacognition, when what the author admits in this text, is precisely a certain unknown quality to metacognition.

Hence, further research on this topic, given space constraints would aim to develop two lines of thought: firstly, to inquire into Sternberg’s distinction between metacognition and “innate” qualities, to the extent that, in my reading, they are not mutually exclusive concepts, but perhaps metacognition can also obviously include more “biological” accounts. Secondly, another point of inquiry would be the following: if metacognition is so heterogeneous and diverse, perhaps its importance is overstated, not in the sense that the concept is without merit, but rather that without more robust definitions of metacognition, the stressing of its importance is premature.

Works Cited

Sternberg, Robert J. “Metacognition, abilities, and developing expertise: What makes an expert student?” Instructional Science 26: 127-140, 1998. pp. 127-140.