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Meaning of Metacognition in education

Metacognition is increasingly becoming popular in education these days. Since education has transformed into a technology-based system, metacognition is one of the most cost-effective ways to help students improve their learning skills. Even so, more and more schools are incorporating the teaching of metacognition in the classrooms.

Metacognition, derived from the Greek word ‘meta’ (beyond) and the Latin word ‘cognoscere’ (getting to know), is the student’s ability to be aware of what they are thinking and choose a helpful thought process. Usually, it captures a student’s ability to analyze how they think, has high self-awareness and control over their thoughts, and choose a helpful strategy for the task at hand. The importance of metacognition in education can be reflected in the rise of research suggesting that it is an effective, cost-efficient, and developing way to help students enhance their learning skills. Much evidence has shown that those students who incorporate metacognition thinking and strategies improve vastly in various subjects such as math, English, and science. For example, the ability to critically analyze how you think can be related to a real-life scenario where we often tend to believe that we are not wrong but taking a step back to analyze our thought process plays a vital role in becoming an independent learner.