Metacognicion

Metacognition: Definitions and Empirical Foundations
Douglas J. Hacker
The University of Memphis

Hacker, D. (2002). Metacognition: Definitions and Empirical Foundations The University of Memphis. Retrieved on Dec. 2nd, 2002, from this web-site: http://www.psyc.memphis.edu/trg/meta.htm

A diligent twelfth-grade student sits attentively in her pre-calculus class trying to follow theteacher's first lesson on the fundamental theorem of integral calculus. The teacher is using the analogy of finding the area under the sinuous track of a roller coaster to instruct the concept of area under a mathematically defined curve. The steel girders holding up the track circumscribe rectangular columns whose widths can become increasingly smaller, and with increasingly smaller widths a closerapproximation of the total area under the track can be obtained. Our student recalls the section in her mathematics textbook that she studied the night before, and she is beginning to make the connection between the textbook's presentation and the teacher's analogy. She knows how to calculate the area of a rectangle, and she understands how she can use what she knows to find the total areaunder the track by adding all the rectangular columns of area under the track. However, she has not quite arrived at how the total area would be affected by making the widths of the columns increasingly small. She realizes that she does not understand, and she tries to increase her concentration on the teacher's explanation and on the diagram of the roller coaster drawn on the blackboard.Unfortunately, her attempts to increase concentration are failing because two students sitting behind her are distracting her with whispers about what happened to a mutual friend over the weekend. And to add to her difficulties, the teacher's use of the roller coaster analogy has reminded her of last summer's vacation to Disneyland. Memories of the fun she had there on the roller coaster are furtherinterfering with her thoughts of the problem at hand. She decides to redouble her concentration and is able to filter out the students' whispers. She then also realizes that her memories of Disneyland can be used if she focused attention specifically on memories of the superstructure that supported the roller coaster. Her insight, however, is interrupted when she hears the teacher tell the classto take out a piece of paper for a surprise quiz on the material just covered. Our diligent student is hit with a sinking feeling in her stomach because she knows that she did not understand the lesson, and her poor performance on the quiz will likely bring her average for the course down to a "C."
Many of the thoughts and feelings experienced by this twelfth-grade student as she attemptsto take charge of her learning can be described as metacognitive: realizing she does not understand; deliberately increasing her concentration to block out environmental distractions; and consciously using her memories of Disneyland to progress toward understanding. What makes these thoughts or feelings "metacognitive" as opposed to simply cognitive is not easy to describe (Nelson & Narens,1990). Descriptions are difficult because metacognition by its very nature is a "fuzzy concept" (Flavell, 1981, p. 37), which has been made even fuzzier by a ballooning corpus of research that has come from researchers of widely varying disciplines and for widely varying purposes.
The purpose of this chapter is to cut through the fuzziness surrounding the concept by describing thecharacteristics of metacognition that have remained relatively constant across disciplines and purposes since John Flavell's pioneering work helped give form to the concept and whose call for research provided an impetus for its study. In addition, greater understanding of metacognition can be gained by knowing how it has been investigated. Therefore, a brief review will be given of the ways in which...