When facing a career change or deciding to switch jobs, you might update the hard and soft skills on your resume. You could even take courses to upskill and expand your portfolio.
But some growth happens off the page. Your metacognitive skills contribute to your learning process and help you look inward to self-reflect and monitor your growth. They’re like a golden ticket toward excellence in both academia and your career path, always pushing you further.
A deeper understanding of metacognition, along with effective strategies for developing related skills, opens the door to heightened personal and professional development. Metacognitive thinking might just be the tool you need to reach your academic and career goals
What are metacognitive skills?
Metacognitive skills are the soft skills you use to monitor and control your learning and problem-solving processes, or your thinking about thinking. This self-understanding is known as metacognition theory, a term that the American developmental psychologist John H. Flavell coined in the 1970s.
It might sound abstract, but these skills are mostly about self-awareness, learning, and organizing your thoughts. Metacognitive strategies include thinking out loud and answering reflective questions. They’re often relevant for students who need to memorize concepts fast or absorb lots of information at once.
But metacognition is important for everyone because it helps you retain information more efficiently and feel more confident about what you know. One meta-analysis of many studies showed that being aware of metacognitive strategies has a strong positive impact on teaching and learning, and that knowing how to plan ahead was a key indicator of future success.
Examples of metacognitive skills
Understanding your cognition and how you learn is a fundamental step in optimizing your educational process. To make the concept more tangible, here are a few cognitive skills examples:
Goal setting
One of the foremost metacognitive skills is knowing how to set goals — recognizing what your ambitions are and fine-tuning them into manageable and attainable objectives. The SMART goal framework is a good place to start because it dives deeper into what you know you can realistically achieve.
Whether it's a personal goal of grasping a complex concept, a professional goal of developing a new skill set, or a financial goal of achieving a budgeting milestone, setting a concrete goal helps you know what you’re working toward. It’s the first step to self-directed learning and achievement, giving you a destination for your path.
Planning and organization
Planning is an essential metacognition example because it sketches out the route you'll take to reach your goal, as well as identifying and collecting the specific strategies, resources, and support mechanisms you'll need along the way. It’s an in-demand skill for many jobs, but it also helps you learn new things.
Creating and organizing a plan is where you contemplate the best methods for learning, evaluate the materials and resources at your disposal, and determine the most efficient time management strategies. Even though it’s a concrete skill, it falls under the umbrella of metacognition because it involves self-awareness about your learning style and abilities.
Problem-solving
Central to metacognition is problem-solving, a higher-order cognitive process requiring both creative and critical thinking skills. Solving problems both at work and during learning begins with recognizing the issue at hand, analyzing the details, and considering potential solutions. The next step is selecting the most promising solution from the pool of possibilities and evaluating the results after implementation.
The problem-solving process gives you the opportunity to grow from your mistakes and practice trial and error. It also helps you reflect and refine your approach for future endeavors. These qualities make it central to metacognition’s inward-facing yet action-oriented processes.
Concentration
Concentration allows you to fully engage with the information you’re processing and retain new knowledge. It involves a high degree of mental fitness, which you can develop with metacognition. Most tasks require the ability to ignore distractions, resist procrastination, and maintain a steady focus on the task at hand.
This skill is paramount when it comes to work-from-home settings or jobs with lots of moving parts where countless distractions are constantly vying for your attention. And training your mind to focus better in general can also increase your learning efficacy and overall productivity.
Self-reflection
The practice of self-reflection involves continually assessing your performance, cognitive strategies, and experiences to foster self-improvement. It's a type of mental debriefing where you look back on your actions and outcomes, examining them critically to gain insight and experience valuable lessons.
Reflective practice can help you identify what worked well, what didn't, and why, giving you the opportunity to make necessary adjustments for future actions. This continuous process enhances your learning and helps you adapt to new changes and strategies.
How to improve metacognitive skills
Metacognition turns you into a self-aware problem solver, empowering you to take control of your education and become a more efficient thinker. Although it’s helpful for students, you can also apply it in the workplace while brainstorming and discovering new ways to fulfill your roles and responsibilities.
Here are some examples of metacognitive strategies and how to cultivate your abilities:
1. Determine your learning style
Are you a visual learner who thrives on images, diagrams, and color-coded notes? Are you an auditory learner who benefits more from verbal instructions, podcasts, or group discussions? Or are you a kinesthetic learner who enjoys hands-on experiences, experiments, or physical activities?
Metacognition in education is critical because it teaches you to recognize the way you intake information — the first step to effective strategies that help you truly retain information. By identifying your learning style, you can tailor your goals and study strategies to suit your strengths, maximizing your cognitive potential and improving your understanding of new material.
2. Find deeper meaning in what you read
Merely skimming the surface of the text you read won't lead to profound understanding or long-term retention. Instead, dive deep into the material. Employ reading strategies like note-taking, highlighting, and summarizing to help information enter your brain.
If that process doesn’t work for you, try using brainstorming techniques like mind mapping to tease out the underlying themes and messages. This depth of processing enhances comprehension and allows you to connect new information to prior knowledge, promoting meaningful learning.
3. Write organized plans
Deconstruct your tasks into manageable units and create a comprehensive, step-by-step plan. Having a detailed guide breaks down large, intimidating tasks into bite-sized, achievable parts, reduces the risk of procrastination, and helps manage cognitive load. This process frees up your mental energy for higher-order thinking.
4. Ask yourself open-ended questions
Metacognitive questioning is a powerful tool for fostering self-awareness. Asking good questions like “What am I trying to achieve?” and “Why did this approach work or not work?” facilitates a deeper understanding of your education style, promotes critical thinking, and enables self-directed learning. Your answers will pave the way for improved processes.
5. Ask for feedback
External perspectives offer valuable insights into your thinking patterns and strategies. Seek feedback from teachers, peers, or mentors and earn the metacognitive knowledge you need to identify strengths to harness and weaknesses to address. Remember, the objective isn’t to nitpick or micromanage. It’s constructive criticism to help refine your learning process.
6. Self-evaluate
Cultivate a habit of self-assessment and self-monitoring, whether you’re experiencing something new or working on an innovative project. Check in on progress regularly, and compare current performance with your goals. This continuous self-evaluation helps you maintain focus on your objectives and identify when you're going off track, allowing for timely adjustments when necessary.
Introspection is a powerful tool, and you can’t overstate the importance of knowing yourself. After all, building your metacognitive skills begins with a strong foundation of self-awareness and accountability.
7. Focus on solutions
It's easy to let problems and obstacles discourage you during the learning process. But metacognitive skills encourage a solutions-oriented mindset. Instead of fixating on the challenges, shift your focus to identifying, analyzing, and implementing creative solutions.
This proactive approach fosters resilience and adaptability skills in the face of adversity, helping you overcome whatever comes your way. Cultivating this mindset — sometimes known as a growth mindset — also boosts your problem-solving prowess and transforms challenges into opportunities for growth.
8. Journal
The simple act of writing about your learning experiences can heighten your metacognitive awareness. Journaling provides a space to reflect on your thought processes, emotions, and struggles, which can reveal patterns and trends in your behavior. It’s a springboard for improvement that helps you recognize and solve problems as they come.
Take charge of your mind
In the journey of learning and career advancement, metacognitive skills are your compass toward improvement. They empower you to understand your cognitive processes, enhance your strategies, and become a more effective thinker. They’re useful whether you’re just starting a master’s degree or upskilling to earn a promotion.
Remember, the journey to gain metacognitive skills isn’t a race. It’s a personal voyage of self-discovery and growth. Each stride you take toward honing your metacognitive skills is a step toward a more successful, fulfilling, and self-aware life.
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