In this highly competitive world, one way to stay ahead in the competition is by scoring good grades in the exam.
Although, there is a huge contention on judging a student’s competence merely on grades, yet grades do have some kind of importance attached with it in deciding a students’ academic excellence. And, the fact that, any child has to score good mounts a great pressure on them. Such pressure in most cases does little good to them.
In respect to scoring better in exams, a lot of emphasis is laid upon metacognition training. Hearing this, I am sure one wonders what is this and how is it related to students achievement? Well, before discussing straightaway metacognition training and its benefits, it’s first important to understand what the term implies. It means ‘thinking about thinking’ and surely it is a powerful skill for building resilience. It is revolutionary because through this skill ‘Kids are helped to make the transition from I, can’t to the proactive how can I not do it?’
Metacognition approaches are directly linked to students’ achievement and learning because students need to know when one needs to stop studying a specific topic and proceed to the next or simply wrap-up. And to realize this, students must have an idea about what they know and what they do not know yet. This judgment begins only when students realize the power of metacognition and start using its approaches in analyzing their learning. by constantly judging and analyzing own learning process, we find students making best use of their time by not lingering too much on topics they know but rather focusing on the topics that they are yet to know.
In this light, a research piece that had appeared in the Education Research International, helps one to a great deal in understanding ‘Metacognitive Strategies and how it influences Students Learning behavior.’ The intent of this research was to mainly study and address upon the critical limitations of global measures by measuring situations-specific strategy use. To get a complete insight of this study, click here.
How Metacognition training helps students?
The metacognitive training programs help every students and professionals in increasing their metacognitive accuracy for studying something. Such kind of training is aimed at teaching meta-cognitive and self-regulation strategies. These strategies help struggling students become expert learners by helping them-
- Plan & Organize lesson learning
- Monitor their own work
- Self-Reflect and
- Direct their own learning
In a piece published by the University of UTAH, it was highlighted how metacognition training boosts gen chemists’ exam scores. A significant facet that was stressed upon in this same piece was that, often students tend to overestimate their own abilities and the key to scoring better is to overcome such overestimation tendency which in the study was found that students undergoing metacognition are able to resolve this tendency. Read more
Apart from this, students on a day today basis many difficult situations such as completing homework or assignments without being overexcited or losing hope easily. For a child with ADHD issue may get frustrated and anxious while working on long assignments. Similarly for kids who’s learned to reflect upon his own learning process may also fall prey to frustration when they have to work for long time. These are some situation that students are confronted with daily. In this case too, having a sound knowledge of metacognitive approach is a great benefit as then they are able to manage such frustration better by following a better approach. The training program, does touch upon all these issues before teaching strategies directly.
So, we find that when students realize how to use metacognition they have a complete knowledge about cognition and mental processes. So they can then utilize that ability to regulate those processes to improve thinking skills or the quality of learning and thinking to prepare for exams and score better. And most importantly, students learn not to get disappointed on unto do challenges while working on long assignments.
So, isn’t it a good way to encourage students to score better in exams and have a great control over self-regulation. So next time you see students getting bogged down by low score, suggest them to definitely attend a metacognition training or conduct one for them in your institution.
