Learning Science · Metacognition: knowing what you know and what needs work
Monitoring learning and choosing an action
Separate a judgement about learning from the action that judgement should trigger.
Use the examples to connect this lesson with the earlier topics. No specialist equipment is needed.
Back to the chapterAfter reading, you can
- Distinguish monitoring from control.
- Choose a check that can guide a specific next action.
A confident explanation with a missing step
Mira watches a teacher solve a ratio problem and thinks she understands. When the example disappears, she cannot explain why both quantities must be multiplied by the same number. Her judgement and her ability have come apart. The useful question is not whether she is a confident person. It is what information her judgement used and what she should do next.
Two connected jobs
Monitoring means estimating the current state of learning: what can I explain, recall or do, and under what conditions? Control means choosing an action: continue, change a strategy, revisit a prerequisite, seek help or stop. Monitoring without control produces a record without an improvement. Control without adequate monitoring can spend an hour rehearsing something already secure.
A feeling is one source of information, but a completed attempt is often more diagnostic. A check should resemble the intended use closely enough to expose relevant gaps. Repeating a definition cannot establish that someone can choose that definition correctly in a new case.
| Quantity | For 4 people | Shared factor | For 6 people |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rice | 200 g | ×1.5 | 300 g |
| Water | 400 mL | ×1.5 | 600 mL |
Choose an action that fits the gap
If Mira recalls the rule but cannot justify it, more copying may leave the same gap. She can compare equivalent and nonequivalent ratios, explain what stays constant and then solve another problem. If she cannot multiply reliably, she needs support with that component instead. A learning action is a hypothesis about the source of a difficulty.
After acting, check again. The purpose of this cycle is improved task performance, not constant self-surveillance. Monitoring every few seconds can interrupt concentration. Choose useful stopping points, such as after a small set of problems or before moving to a more complex task.
Worked example
From a check to a decision
How should the rice and water quantities change when a recipe scales from four to six people?
- Mira tries to enlarge a recipe from four people to six.
- She changes 200 grams of rice to 300 grams but leaves 400 millilitres of water unchanged.
- The error suggests she applied the scale factor to only one quantity.
- She draws the original and enlarged ingredient pairs, explains the shared factor of 1.5, and tries a different recipe.
- Success on that second attempt is evidence for the chosen repair; the earlier confidence alone was not.
The shared factor is 6/4 = 1.5: 200 g becomes 300 g and 400 mL becomes 600 mL. The original error scaled only one quantity.
Try it yourself
Think through each question before opening the answer.
Why is writing “study harder” an incomplete control decision?
Show the answer and reasoning
It does not identify the gap or an action that addresses it.
A decision such as comparing two ratio cases can be checked against a specific difficulty.
A learner can calculate correctly but cannot choose when to use a method. What check fits?
Show the answer and reasoning
Give mixed problems and ask for a method and justification before calculation.
Another calculation with the method named would hide the selection problem.
What to carry forward
- Use monitoring to inform an action.
- Match the check to the intended ability and the repair to the observed gap.
References
Sources supporting the explanations and learning checks in this lesson.