1. The Role of Metacognition in
Teaching and Learning of Reading Comprehension
Created by Ellen Hobson
July, 2008

2. (O’Mally, Chamot, Stewner-Mazanaares, Russo, & Kupper, 1985, p.561)
“ Students without metacognitive approaches are essentially learners without direction or opportunity to review their progress, accomplishments, and future directions.”
(O’Mally, Chamot, Stewner-Mazanaares, Russo, & Kupper, 1985, p.561)

3. What is Metacognition?
The term metacognition as used by Flavell (1979) refers to an individual’s awareness of his or her cognitive processes and strategies.

4. What is Metacognition?
Other researchers have used a more simplistic definition of metacognition,‘ thinking about thinking’(Blakey & Spence, 2006; Livingston, 1997; ).

5. What is Metacognition?
Having a metacognitive awareness means an individual not only has knowledge about themselves but it also includes knowledge about the strategies used to tackle problems (Fisher, 1998).

6. Metacognition: Importance
There are several reasons why the concept of metacognition has been enthusiastically accepted.

7. Metacognition: Importance
It stresses the active participation by the reader in strategic reading.
Interviews with younger children showed that they actually knew very little about the process of reading.
It offers an alternative to traditional methods of teaching.

8. Cognitive versus Metacognitive
A cognitive strategy is used to achieve a certain task or goal. For example, we use cognitive strategies to understand what we have read or to compute problems in Math.

9. Cognitive versus Metacognitive
Metacognitive strategies are used to ensure that our goals or tasks have been properly completed or understood. It enables a learner to monitor and improve upon his or her knowledge (Gourgey, 1998).

10. Research on Metacognition
Researchers have studied the concept as it applies to intelligence, special education, giftedness, and many curricular areas.

11. Research on Metacognition
Metacognition has been applied in Math, problem solving, ESL learning, reading and writing.

12. Research on Metacognition
An area that has received much of the research attention is that of reading comprehension.

13. Reading Comprehension and Metacognition
Awareness and monitoring are in itself what it means to be metacognitive during the process of reading. The process of monitoring comprehension plays a central role in metacognition because it is what we do when we apply metacognitive skills.

14. Reading Comprehension and Metacognition
Being aware of one’s thinking during this monitoring process is also crucial.

15. Teaching Thinking
Many educators have become dissatisfied with reading programs and traditional approaches to comprehension and this has resulted in broader views of reading that embed comprehension in thinking skills (Paris, 1987).

16. Teaching Thinking
Promoting thinking is important because it encourages children’s construction of knowledge, promotes their curiosity, and helps to build upon their interests and prior experiences.
(Salmon, 2008)

17. The Importance of Comprehension Monitoring
The process of monitoring one’s comprehension, also known as metacognition, has been recognized as being vitally important to skilled reading. (Mokhtari et al., 2002).

18. The Importance of Comprehension Monitoring
Palincsar and Brown (1984) described six different comprehension-monitoring strategies.
clarifying the purpose of reading
activating background knowledge
identifying important text details
evaluating text for internal consistency with prior knowledge
self-monitoring
making inferences from text

19. Strategy Instruction
By the time it neared the end of the 1990’s, researchers had evidence that students could be taught to use strategies to aid in memory and comprehension (Garner, 1987; Houtveen & Van de Grift, 2007).

20. Strategy Instruction
In addition to having instruction on what strategies to use, learners need instruction on when, where, and how to use these strategies as well as learning them to the point where they are internalized as skills (Garner, 1987; Anderson, 1991).

21. Direct Explanation of Strategies
Many researchers have tried to foster better metacognition and comprehension through direct instruction of strategies (Paris, Wasik, & Turner, 1991).

22. Direct Explanation of Strategies
There are at least three advantages to the direct instruction approach.
Direct instruction about academic tasks helps students to cope with these tasks by preparing them with useful measures for problem solving.
It forces teachers to do more than simply distribute work assignments to students.
It is a practical way of teaching since it can be done in small or large groups.

23. InDirect Explanation of Strategies
Some instructional interventions do not rely on the direct teaching of strategies but rather rely on an indirect means to foster an appreciation and development of reading comprehension strategies.

24. Reciprocal Teaching
The method is based upon a dialogue between teacher and student where predicting, question generating, summarizing, and clarifying are used to promote comprehension monitoring.

25. Cooperative Learning
Cooperative leaning is an effective method for metacognitive exchanges as students discuss and interact in a shared reading environment. It provides opportunities to reduce anxiety, and provide positive support among peers. (Paris et al., 1990; 1991).

26. Reading Power
Reading Power created by Adrienne Gear, a Vancouver based literacy consultant, incorporates both direct and indirect instructional methods to teach students to think while they read.

27. Reading Power
The program begins with teacher modeling that includes explaining, demonstrating, and read aloud/think aloud.
The next step involves the teacher and students practicing a strategy together in small or large groups.
The students then try to use a strategy on their own with teacher monitoring.
Finally, the student applies the strategy to real reading experiences.

28. Challenges of Metacognition
Many of these instruments that are used to measure metacognition can sometimes prove to be tedious, complex and lacking in validity. As a result, measuring metacognition has been cited as a challenge, difficulty, and criticism (Gay, 2001).

29. Challenges of Metacognition
Jacobs et al. (1987) say that another concern with the term metacognition is that some educators believe that focusing on thinking, reflecting, and strategic planning will lead to a copious amount of drills on cognitive skills that are not embedded within the context of reading.

30. Conclusion
An overwhelming central message from the research is that metacognition plays a very important role in enhancing student learning. This leads to the obvious conclusion that metacognition and the language of thinking and reflection needs to be embedded into the learning objectives, teaching packages, and daily classroom teaching practices of teachers.

31. Please see the link on the homepage for a full display of references.
Thank-you!