Metacognition for self-esteem, self-regulation, academic success

Did you know metacognition instruction has been identified and validated as a key method for improving self-esteem, self-regulation, academic success, and test scores?

I have this little book called Mr. Daydream I sometimes read to children who seem to daydream in school and miss instruction. It’s pretty short and I ask questions to make sure my young listener understands the concept of daydreaming. Often as I’m reading they will look out the window. And keep looking.

I’ll say “Hey, are you with me?”

They say “What? Oh, uh, yeah.”

I say “What were you thinking about just then?”

They say “Nothing,” or “I don’t know.”

Sometimes I wish I could make my mind stop thinking, but so far I have not been successful. What I’m saying is, a person can lack awareness of what they are thinking about.

In this article “Metacognition for self-esteem, self-regulation, academic success” you will find; Signs of underdeveloped metacognition, What is metacognition, Teaching metacognition and self-talk for self-esteem, self-control, and emotional regulation, How to teach metacognition for greater academic success.

Ever had an experience where a kid does something inappropriate right in front of you?

You say, “Why did you do that?” Or maybe you say, “Don’t do that.”

They say “I didn’t do it.”

Or maybe they have done something inappropriate, and afterwards:

You say “What were you thinking?”

They say “I don’t know.”

That’s metacognition, the ability to think about what you are thinking about. While this thinking skill can be taught, and developed, some people don’t have it. Maybe when they get in trouble, they fail to connect an awareness of their behavior with the consequence. They just think you are being mean and unfair.

Signs and consequences of poor metacognitive skill development

Lacking self-talk skills to internally coach oneself to control emotions and reactions.

Poor awareness of context and changing expectations for behavior in different settings with different people. For example, telling a joke that may be appropriate with friends but NOT within earshot of the teacher or parent, and then getting in trouble.

Difficulty with problem solving, may fail to adapt and try a new strategy and continue trying something that is not working.

Trouble with flexible thinking and behavior, such as adapting to unexpected changes in routine and transitions. You tell them it’s time to turn of the video game and go to bed, and they have a defiant tantrum every time. Groundhog day.

Poor empathy and perspective-taking skills. Maybe they think they should go first or be line-leader every single time, neglecting to share the privilege with others.

Trouble with showing their work in complex Math problems as normally required in Algebra.

Trouble with Math word problems- they either see the answer right away or they can’t solve it.

Persisting in making the same error in spite of repeatedly being disciplined for it.

Difficulty with making and keeping friends.

Having a hard time organizing thoughts to write an essay.

May tend to say “I can’t do it,” stay stuck, and repeatedly neglect to ask for help.

Problems coping with and quieting their own negative self-talk.

Knowledge illusions whereby the individual thinks their knowledge is greater than it is or they have learned more than they actually have. May come across as arrogant or insist they don’t need practice to perform in a sport or with a musical instrument.

When you ask them what they were thinking, they say “I don’t know.”

They see you seeing them as they misbehave and yet insist they didn’t do it.

You catch them daydreaming, ask what they were thinking, and they say “Nothing” or “I don’t know.”

Their behavior does not match the rest of the group or is inappropriate for the context/audience.

Failure to notice off-task behaviors and self-correct.

Metacognition is having awareness of one’s own thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them.

1. Planning your approach to a learning task.
2. Use of appropriate skills and strategies to solve a problem.
3. Monitoring your own comprehension of text and and task requirements.
4. Self-awareness and self-evaluation resulting in self-correction
5. Evaluation of progress towards task completion.
6. Awareness of distractions.

What is the role of metacognition in regulating emotions, behaviors, and social interactions in successful and expected ways? Metacognition is a key thinking skill for self-esteem, self-regulation, and academic success.

Teaching self-talk

Would it sound strange if I said that some people don’t think in words? Google it up, you will find it’s true. What would be the impact on metacognition if someone were say, a picture thinker? Can they process in multiple windows this way, like a computer? Could they create an image or video in their mind that was an analysis of their primary thought process? Thinking in words makes this much easier. You can have a thought in words, and then a second thought about that thought- is this really true, would this action be a good idea, is what I’m doing to solve this problem working or should I try a different way?

Thinking in words is like a shortcut relative to images. Not only do we need to think this way to develop metacognition, we also need to think this way to inhibit inappropriate impulses and bad ideas before we act on them. Do people with poorly developed metacognition also often tend to be impulsive? You bet. Sometimes we call that ADHD.

So if we are working with someone who is great with legos and engineering problems, but struggles with self-control and expected behaviors in a group or social setting, what can we do to help them learn to have internal dialogue? We can do this by asking questions before a social situation or learning task is presented. What are expected behaviors while waiting in the doctor’s office? When your friend comes over, what will you do if you want to do one thing and they want to do something else? Later in this article questions for learning tasks will be listed.

You can also teach by modeling your internal dialogue, or thought process, speaking your thoughts out loud as you problem-solve or make plans. You can narrate what kids are doing as they play and solve their own problems. Are you getting frustrated? Has your strategy to make this work been working? Could there be other ways you could try?

Cognitve Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Self-talk, Self-esteem, and Self-control

Ahhh! I never win!

I can’t do anything right!

You never let me do anything I want to do!

CBT is one of the most common and research-validated methods of counseling. It involves teaching that our minds are making thoughts all the time. Some of these thoughts are true (rational), and some are not (irrational). Some feel good, some feel bad. Our thoughts create our feelings, our experience of reality. We often can’t control others or what happens around us, but we do have some power over our thoughts about what happens, in turn regulating our feelings about what happens.

There are categories of thinking errors we can teach. For a young child, we might start with boo-boo thoughts and smiling thoughts, then teach how to make bandage thoughts for the boo-boo thoughts. As children become late elementary or middle school aged, we have categories of thinking errors we can teach. They can become more adapt at catching their thinking errors, and talking back to them or replacing them with smarter ways to think that usually also feel better.

Statements like “I never do anything right” can be challenged. “Never” is a keyword indicating the category of thinking error called overgeneralization. When I get started teaching CBT to a youngster, I may play a game where I read a list of thoughts and they tell me if the thought is true, or rational, or not true, irrational. And yes, when I read “I never do anything right” they often say “true.” I say, “Really? Hmmm. Let’s see. Your shoes are on the right feet. Your pants aren’t on backwards. You probably got from your car into my office without falling down. How many times today have you blinked in time so your eyeballs didn’t dry out? How many breaths have you taken so you stay alive? Didn’t you say your grades were all passing, so wouldn’t that mean you got it right most of the time?”

I might also read them my Garden of the Mind metaphor, to illustrate the power of thought, and our tendency to focus on negative and worry thoughts.

Next I may play a kid-friendly game that involves reading thoughts on cards made by a person in situation. We practice identifying the type of thinking error the person had, and a smarter or better way to think. Finally, ideally they take the list of thinking errors home for practice, and use my thought record form to build awareness of self-talk and develop skills in detecting unwanted, untrue thoughts and replacing them with smarter, better-feeling thoughts.

The link below summarizes research about children’s awareness of the link between thoughts and feelings and they types of metacognitive strategies they can understand and utilize for emotional regulation.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2916181/

You can click the terms below if you want to see these forms and templates for yourself. They come from my book Counseling Tools for Kids in Schools.

Self-talk, Self-esteem, Self-control Video Course

Success Stories for teaching Metacognition for self-esteem, self-regulation, academic success

It makes sense that if a person has trouble with metacognition, or thinking about what they are thinking about, they would also have trouble thinking about what others are thinking about. Ergo difficulty recognizing others may have different emotions, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and predicting others’ plans, feelings, and reactions.

In the literature about Autism this is often called perspective-taking or theory of mind. Sometimes it is called empathy. In the literature and treatment protocols for personality disorders, such as Borderline or Narcissistic, it’s called mentalizing. Mentalizing in this context refers to the ability to form concepts about one’s own emotional state and the emotional states of others.

Another way I use to teach mentalizing, perspective-taking, and CBT, is to use Success Stories. These are like comic strips with boxes showing people in a situation, what they are saying, doing, feeling, and thinking. We may just draw stick figures with thought bubbles and speaking bubbles. I have templates for you below. The templates have descriptions for what goes in each empty box. This is a visual strategy to assist the learner in anticipating and mapping out how they will feel based what kind of thoughts they are making, how to make better thoughts and feel better (CBT template). The perspective-taking template helps them predict how others will have different feelings and reactions to what the learner does; how they will likely respond to the learner, and how the learner ends up feeling about this consequence.

A little background on executive skills, ADHD, and Autism

Metacognition is one category of executive skills, sometimes called executive functions. These are thinking skills that enable us to coordinate the orchestra of our behavior in the pursuit of a goal. Executive skills include:

Metacognition

Inhibition or impulse control

Shift

Emotional control or stress tolerance

Time Management

Self and task monitor

Working (short-term) memory

Planning/prioritization

Goal-directed persistence

Organization

Flexibility

When someone has ADHD or Autism, they have some poorly developed executive skills relative to most age-peers. I think this is also true in reverse. Enough delays in development of executive skills can result in a diagnosis of ADHD or Autism. Can college students and adults still have underdeveloped metacognitve skills and learn to improve? Absolutely.

Learn more about executive skills here.

How to Teach Metacognition for Academic Success

https://lincs.ed.gov/state-resources/federal-initiatives/teal/guide/metacognitive

The information in the above link advises us to “encourage students to engage in “metacognitive conversations with themselves so they can talk with themselves about their learning, their challenges, and ways they can self-correct and continue learning.” People who have a variety of metacognitive skills perform better on exams and complete work more efficiently. Research clearly shows these skills can be taught by asking learners to think about what they are doing and what they should do next. In other words, don’t be the genius and tell them, instead ask. (Don’t tell ask article link) Even college students and adults can lack good development of metacognitive skills, learn to apply them, and improve their performance significantly.

How metacognition can be taught in the learning environment for improved performance:

1. Develop a plan for a learning task.
2. Monitor your approach and create new strategies when progress or meaning falters.
3. Evaluate how they thought about the task after completion.

Questions to ask yourself or be prompted to ask yourself at each of the above three phases:

1. Planning Phase: What am I supposed to learn? What do I already know that will help me? What am I looking for in the text? How much time do I have? What direction should I be thinking in?
2. Monitoring Phase: How am I doing? Am I on the right track? What is important to remember? Am I doing this the best way? Should I change direction/strategies? Should I slow down or speed up? What can I do if I don’t understand?
3. Evaluation Phase: How did I do? What did I learn? Did this come out as expected? Could I have done something differently? Could I use what I learned in different situations? Is there anything I still don’t understand? Do I need to review the task to see what I missed?

Reading: Model thinking out loud and asking questions during reading. Ask them questions as they read to you out loud and teach them to ask themselves often if they are understanding what they are reading. Teach note taking or highlighting while asking themselves “Why am I highlighting this and why am I not highlighting that?

Writing: Model prewriting strategies for organizing thoughts such as brainstorming using a word web or graphic organizer to put main ideas in paragraphs with the main idea at the top and supporting ideas below.

Social Studies and Science: Teach the importance of using organizers such as Venn diagrams, concept maps, anticipation/reaction charts to sort information and understand content and key relationships between concepts. Use organizers to focus attention on what is already known and identify what they want to learn. Venn diagrams can be used to understand similarities and differences between related concepts.

Math: Use mnemonics to memorize lists and steps in a process such as order in Mathematical operations. Model inner dialogue by thinking out loud your thoughts about solving problems as you go. Ask them to paraphrase word problems, restating the text in their own words to help them process the meaning of the question and correct operations to perform.

How to improve metacognition:

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/8-pathways-metacognition-in-classroom-marilyn-price-mitchell

https://www.globalmetacognition.com/post/emotions-metacognition

https://blog.innerdrive.co.uk/eight-ways-to-develop-metacognitive-skills

https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2017/3/30-1

I hope you enjoyed this article “Metacognition for self-esteem, self-regulation, academic success“