Notes

Metacognition refers to higher order thinking which involves active control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning. Activities such as planning how to approach a given learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress toward the completion of a task are metacognitive in nature.
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The curse of metacognition
JUNE 27, 2014 BY AWRESTLINGWRITER4

"I have a curse. It’s the curse of metacognition. It could also be called the super-ego syndrome.

Being self-aware is a good thing, I reckon. But I am way too self-aware.

It drives me crazy sometimes. I just want to be; I don’t want to think about being. My mind won’t just let me be. It looks at me: it examines, questions, critiques, judges, yells at, laughs at and watches me. All the time. It never gives me a break.

It’s as though I exist in two worlds: the me in my mind and the me in the physical world. The me in my mind rules when sometimes I just want to be the me in the world. I want the two me’s to be one me. I don’t want the me in my mind (metacognition) to disappear; I just want the me in my mind to be okay with the me in this world so they agree and are united as one.

The problem of the two me’s follows me everywhere.

Wherever I am, the me in my mind is always there: when I’m driving my car, walking down the street, having a conversation with a friend, or lying in bed. It won’t leave me alone. I want to get away from myself, but the me in my mind is like a mirror, always showing me myself.

I don’t like it when I see people, and I only see me. It makes me self-absorbed.

What do they think of me? How am I standing? What kind of tone should I use? Is my face making the right expression? What is my hair doing? Am I being a good listener? What did they say? How should I react? Did I react well enough? Argh!

It’s like I’m listening to three people at once: the person I’m talking to, me when I speak, and the me in my mind who won’t shut up.

The me in my mind pesters me, but it is also vastly interested in myself. I’m so interested in why I do things, what I value, what motivates me, who I am and why I am the way I am. It absolutely intrigues and fascinates me, and I love exploring . . . me. I love exploring psychology.

I like trying to tease out how I think. And all I do is think. How silly does it sound that I’m so interested in my identity? Thank goodness I’m just as interested in other people’s identities; it’s just that my thoughts are the only ones I have access to twenty-four seven, so the majority of my time is consumed with analysing myself.

Am I doomed to live with this other me in my mind for the rest of my life? Should I be taking steps to get rid of it or at least dull it down? Or should I simply live with it and make the best of the situation and even use it to my advantage? Being so self-aware does make me a deep thinker, a bit of a philosopher, a person who tends to be right because I’m so rigorous in my assessment of things, and a person with a reputation for possessing wisdom. Is the price of this wisdom a lack of freedom from my self-aware metacognitive self?"

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Some types of metacognitive knowledge would include:

Person knowledge (declarative knowledge) which is understanding one's own capabilities
Task knowledge (procedural knowledge) which is how one perceives the difficulty of a task which is the content, length, and the type of assignment
Strategic knowledge (conditional knowledge) which is one's own capability for using strategies to learn information. Young children are not particularly good at this; it is not until upper elementary where students start to develop the understanding of strategies that will be effective.
Different fields define metacognition very differently. Metacognition variously refers to the study of memory-monitoring and self-regulation, meta-reasoning, consciousness/awareness and auto-consciousness/self-awareness. In practice these capacities are used to regulate one's own cognition, to maximize one's potential to think, learn and to the evaluation of proper ethical/moral rules.

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Metacognition refers to a level of thinking that involves active control over the process of thinking that is used in learning situations. Planning the way to approach a learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating the progress towards the completion of a task: these are skills that are metacognitive in their nature.

Metacognition includes at least three different types of metacognitive awareness when considering metacognitive knowledge:[10]

Declarative knowledge: refers to knowledge about oneself as a learner and about what factors can influence one's performance.[2] Declarative knowledge can also be referred to as "world knowledge".[11]
Procedural knowledge: refers to knowledge about doing things. This type of knowledge is displayed as heuristics and strategies.[2] A high degree of procedural knowledge can allow individuals to perform tasks more automatically. This is achieved through a large variety of strategies that can be accessed more efficiently.[12]
Conditional knowledge: refers to knowing when and why to use declarative and procedural knowledge.[13] It allows students to allocate their resources when using strategies. This in turn allows the strategies to become more effective.[14]
Similar to metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive regulation or "regulation of cognition" contains three skills that are essential.[2][15]

Planning: refers to the appropriate selection of strategies and the correct allocation of resources that affect task performance.
Monitoring: refers to one's awareness of comprehension and task performance
Evaluating: refers to appraising the final product of a task and the efficiency at which the task was performed. This can include re-evaluating strategies that were used.

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