Highlights from The Exam Man podcast, Series 2 Episode 17
At the end of Season 2, we spoke to Nathan Burns about metacognition and its role in revision, exams and assessment. Nathan is a teacher educator, working with schools and organisations across the world to develop high quality teaching practice. He gives us his definition of metacognition – which is essentially thinking about one’s thinking - and how it can be harnessed to support students and educators.
Nathan, could you start by giving us your definition of metacognition?
I think there’s, not necessarily disagreement, but confusion within education as to exactly what it means. And I think that's because there's roughly about 150 years-worth of research around metacognition. And in the realm of education, there's about 50 years-worth of definition. Normally when there's research, there's about one and a half thousand research papers that teachers and researchers typically look at, in which lots of different theorists use lots of different definitions. This means we don't have one precise definition, which I think is why confusion sometimes reigns with exactly what metacognition means.
Now I can't tell you that I've read those one and a half thousand papers but I've read a good, good chunk of papers on metacognition, well into three figures now. There's one definition that jumps out at me whenever anyone says, what is metacognition? I would go back to this one and it's from John Flavell. It's from the 70s, so it's one of the earlier definitions we had when metacognition started to get related into teaching and classrooms. And I'll butcher the quotes slightly here, but the quote from Flavell goes something along the lines of, metacognition is if I realise that I'm having more trouble learning A than B, if I think that I should double check C before accepting it as fact. So what Flavell is really getting at in that definition is, metacognition is this idea of ourselves knowing, oh, I'm finding this a little bit more difficult. Maybe some students aren't finding it too hard, but I'm finding this difficult. Why am I struggling with that? Why is that question particularly tricky for me? Why am I struggling using this strategy? Or why am I struggling in this topic? Or that idea of, actually, that answer doesn't look right. Like, I've done ten of these in lessons before, and now I'm doing this in my mock paper, whatever it might be. Actually, this doesn't look right. I feel I need to go back and check, what I've done. Almost like that Spidey sense of going, this doesn't quite feel right because of questions I've done before, because of keywords I know, because of key facts - whatever it might be, little triggers that make you go, this isn't quite right.
Now, a few years ago when I wrote my first book on metacognition, obviously I was reading all of these papers and bringing together all of these definitions, and I thought, there just aren't enough definitions out there in the world, so let me throw in another one. So I made my own definition.
I'll tell you what, I'll go with that one!
I'll butcher this one as well. Metacognition is the little voice inside your head that is constantly evaluating and reflecting on everything that you're doing. So it doesn't have to be academic, but it's every task that we do, we're constantly evaluating, how did that go? Could I have done it better? Next time I'll do it like this. It could be a simple thing like cooking dinner. If you try a recipe for the very first time and you think that went well, but actually I've just added in too much of this herb or too much of this spice. Next time I'm not going to do that.
We're being reflective. We're thinking next time I'm going to do this differently to get a superior end product. And I guess if we take a step back and really delve into what that word metacognition means, if we think about cognition, that's all the knowledge that we have, that's all the skills that we have, the ability to do stuff. So the ability to chop chicken and throw it into a frying pan, the ability to solve an algebra question.
The meta is basically the analysis, the zoomed out picture of how is that going? How can I do it better? What do I need to be focusing on? What are my strengths? What are my areas of improvement? What do I need help with? So all of those step back overview thoughts that we have.
Obviously we don't do it all the time. It's not like we critically evaluate everything that we do. Sometimes we just go, whatever, I'm just getting on with it. But sometimes, and a lot of the time, professionally or personally, we sort of take a step back and we go, I could have done that in this way. Even just with conversations we have - I know with my two little ones, sometimes you think, I shouldn't have maybe phrased it like that, or, maybe I was a little harsh, or you know, they're tired, and we just step back and we think, actually, I could have gone about that in a different way. Next time I'll do it like this. Or I shouldn't have phrased that email in that way. This person might interpret it like this. It wasn't too clear. Next time I'll double check it before I send it. So metacognition is all of those things, that zoomed out analysis of what we're doing and how we can get better really. That's brilliant. Where my brain has gone straight away is to thinking that we all know people who don't really self-reflect on very much that they do. And we also know people who really, really ruminate on almost everything, almost overthink to the point of anxiety.
Is there a sweet spot within metacognition, a way of doing it that provides the right balance?
It's really easy to constantly think I could have done this, I could have done that, but sometimes we just need to get on with it. We need to get on to the next task or whatever. I think from a school's perspective and student perspective, I often come back to the work of Perkins. This is work that's 35 years old now, and Perkins did some work early 90s and said that metacognition can be split into four areas or four levels. What we don't have unfortunately is like an on-off switch. It's not like you're not metacognitive, but you are. It would be really helpful if we could just activate something in all of us that suddenly makes us effective metacognitive practitioners. And we know those people, whether in the workplace or at schools, students etc who just don't really reflect on much, if anything. And Perkins actually classifies those as a tacit learner - they're the student who sits at the back of the class who you just want to do some work. They're really struggling to just get anything done, whether it's behavioural or whatever it might be. The issue for them is they're just struggling to get through the work more generally, let alone starting to think about that meta aspect.
And then those scales build up, so we go from tacit to aware. An aware individual is not where we want them to be, because an aware individual knows that they could be reflective. So they know that they could sit down and think that went well, I should think about this. So they know they could do that, but they don't. So they're one step further, they're heading in the right direction, but they're still not acting upon it. They know that they could do these things, but they just, they never get around to it, they can't be bothered, whatever it might be.
Then we start to hit the sweet spots. We move into the two higher levels of strategic and reflective. They're called metacognitive practitioners. And in effect, when we look at metacognitive theory, we can break it down roughly into three different areas, and that's our planning, our monitoring and our evaluation. So how am I going to go about this task? Then when we're doing the task, how is it going? And once we've done the task, we go, next time I'll do it like this, next time I'll do it like that. So it's a three-part process. A strategic individual will think about the planning and the evaluation and a reflective individual will go one step further and they'll think about the monitoring. Those are the individuals we want to work with. Those are the individuals who want to be developing in schools and those are the type of individuals who will be more successful when it comes to exams because they'll focus in on the things they really need to and they'll move away from the stuff that they don't necessarily need to. In terms of how do we ensure that things are not going too far? You know, basically, can we over-reflect? Can we over-evaluate? Can we over-plan? I think that's quite difficult. I think that's almost like on a one-to-one student or individual level where we really get to know that student and understand how they go about doing things.
When I'm in schools, working with students, I always focus on developing strategies with them. If they want to work on this area, what's the strategy? And just looking at how students can do different things in order to be more successful metacognitively. If they're using those strategies correctly, hopefully they're not taking it too far and overthinking or overanalysing.
That's particularly pertinent in relation to exams and exam prep, isn't it? In terms of high stress, high stakes exams. What are the strategies that you would recommend around that particularly difficult bit of the educational process?
I think the first one is just effective revision and it's the thing that I see time and time again. I feel like as an education sector, we have got a far better understanding of what effective revision looks like and moving away from, oh, I'm just going to make notes. Oh, look, I highlighted it. It's so pretty, it must be effective. It feels quite rewarding when you get a page of notes or it's highlighted or it's neat or you've done a revision poster or you've made a set of flashcards. We get that instant gratification, don't we? And that's what we want as humans. And I think as an education sector, we've definitely understood that they look nice, but they don't stimulate learning. They're not making the brain think hard.
But I don't necessarily think that always translates to students. And I think students can sometimes slip back into old habits because at the end of the day, humans are instinctively lazy. Maybe that sounds a little bit harsh, but where we can reduce our output, where we can make things easier for ourselves, that's within human nature. It’s living nature - it doesn't matter if you're a koala bear or a human, if we can make things easier for ourselves, then that's what we do. Even students who know, oh, I should maybe be doing this, but making a page of notes is so much nicer. So that's often where I'll start actually really delving into why are those things not effective ways to revise? And then why are these things effective? And yes, your brain hurts. I always say to students, if your brain is not hurting, you're not doing it right.
We did an interview a while ago with a guy called Sander who runs a company that provides revision training. And one of the things that came up in our discussion with him, was this idea that students will often jump through hoops in terms of revision. So for example, schools will lay on things like revision sessions and students will think that because they've gone to those sessions, they've essentially ticked the box, that therefore they have done what is required. And I think what gets lost in that is that real sense of ownership from the students about really understanding what it is that they need to do in order to be successful in preparing for exams.
Exactly. And even where students know what they're supposed to do, it's kind of like, I know I'm supposed to both make the flashcards and then use them. OK, I've used them, so that means I was revising effectively. Unless we understand almost more innately why they're helpful and why we need to keep doing it, it does almost become a tick list. I've worked with some amazing teachers who have introduced these effective revision strategies, but they start introducing them in year seven, and they feed into year eight and year nine, year 10. Where it's built into the curriculum of different lessons, that's where I see it as being more effective.
If you have people come into a school in year 11 and say this is how you revise, it will help some students, but it needs to be embedded far sooner. And again, schools are moving towards that, but it's difficult. We've got so much to cover. There's so little money, so little time, but so much to do. It's not really a surprise. But where it can be embedded in year seven, they're going to learn how to make flashcards and then use them effectively. In year eight, they'll learn about self-testing. Year nine, they'll learn about answering exam papers, whatever it might be, but actually having that embedded, and not just within English or Maths, but also music and PE and PHSE, having it around all of the curriculum areas is what makes it effective.
I think in previous discussions we've had with people about some of the more negative aspects of exams, the general pressure on everyone, one of the things that we've come back to a few times is that schools tend to be really successful with their students when they are embedding this good practice around revision and around exam processes early. So not waiting until year 11, but implementing a lot of this stuff, whether it's to do with the study techniques and methods, like metacognition, or whether it's just the simple process of actually sitting in an exam room.
The schools that start early, that start in year 7, often seem to be the ones that are having real success by the time the students get to year 11. If we get to year 11 and students are only starting to get their head around these ideas now, it's not going to help reduce any of that anxiety and any of that pressure. Whereas if it's something that's introduced and practised in year 7 and 8 and 9, by the time we get to GCSEs, A levels, and then moving on to degree and future life it’s automatic. So if students learn better in year 7, by the time we get to year 11, it really is just recapping and revising as opposed to almost reteaching. I think that's something that students struggle with. This idea of revision is actually where you should know all of this stuff. It's just making sure you can still remember it all. But actually, a lot of students get to year 11 and they're still having to teach themselves stuff. Some of them, maybe they have mastered it and they are just revising. But the night before an exam a lot of kids are going, I don't actually understand this. And it's like, well, we've just had five years to try to understand it. Revision doesn't necessarily solve that. So I guess that's the difference between almost reteaching and revision, isn't it?
Talking about this idea of stress and students feeling comfortable and able to perform, I think leads on to one of the other things that I'm starting to do a lot of work on. And it's building in that idea of metacognitive revision, knowing exactly what to revise. Because again, if students know how they should be revising, they know that they need to use flashcards, and they know that they need to self-test, and they need to answer exam papers and mark them and reflect upon it, that's all good and well. But if students are revising the wrong things, and by that I don't mean they're revising the wrong history topic that they haven't even studied. I don't mean that they're studying the wrong text for English, not things like that. But in terms of students actually being able to accurately identify what their strengths are, and hence spending less time focusing on them.
So for example, students are using flashcards and they use the Leitner method - I've got this right three times in a row, so now I only need to look at it one day a week. That's a really obvious way of a student knowing, I know this. But more generally, because we can't flashcard everything we need to work with students around exams and using things like exam wrappers to help students accurately identify what it is they do know and how accurate their judgments are and improving those judgments.
Sorry, Nathan, can you explain what an exam wrapper is?
The idea of an exam wrapper is a set of reflection questions a student can answer post-assessment. It's often post-assessment, but it can be post end of week test or whatever it might be. And we get students to reflect on, are they happy with their score? Did they do as well as they could do? I think they’re used in a lot of schools, but I'd argue not that effectively. So research that I've been looking at over the last couple of years now, shows it’s more effective getting students to reflect instantly after the assessment has been done, not once it's been marked that’s most effective? And it's once it's been marked when most schools would do a wrapper.
Students will do December mocks, year 11, the teacher will take them in, they'll mark them, the papers get given back, and then students look at the papers and they do a quick wrap and they go, I'm not very happy with my score, I'm going to revise a little bit more and I know this is a topic I need to work on. And that has a value, right? Students maybe get a bit of a blast and they go, I didn't do as well as I thought or, I thought I knew that but actually I didn’t. But the idea of doing this instantly after students have answered the questions, rather than waiting for it to be marked, means we can actually start to improve a student's judgment of self. If we said to a kid, how good are you at this topic? Some kids would be really accurate and they would know exactly what they're good at, but some kids would think they know everything.
This idea of overconfidence - of course I know it. So if we get students to do an exam wrapper instantly after they've answered the paper, before they've got any feedback from their teacher, we're forcing students to think, what is it I was exactly being asked to do? Do I think I've got the marks? Do I think I've got that correct? If it's maths, is it right? Or is it wrong? If it's history, how many marks do I think I've got out of 20? Or how many marks do I think I've got out of 30? Then once the teacher's marked it, a student is able to compare their judgment at the time to what they actually got. That allows students to develop their knowledge of self, their judgment of self, and help students accurately choose the topics that they're struggling with. It helps to deal with a little bit of overconfidence a little bit better. They do a mock paper, they don't do too well, but unfortunately a lot of overconfident students will go, I didn't revise, next time when I revise, it'll be fine. Whereas actually, if we'd have done those reflection questions that bit earlier, and forced students to reflect on it instantly after answering the paper, it would shine a little bit more light. They thought they knew this question, or they didn't know that question, and actually they didn't know it, and they need to pull up their socks a little bit sooner.
That's really fascinating, Nathan. It's not something I would have ever thought of. Of course, that happens naturally sometimes, doesn't it? Students go back to lessons after an exam, and they will discuss the paper, but that formal reflection immediately after an exam is not something that I've really seen before. Could you explain to us how you think metacognitive practices generally can best be developed within school?
So the first thing is, whatever we're trying to develop metacognition-wise, has to be within a lesson. So it's got to be within the core of a music lesson, within the analysis of a poem in English, within solving equations in maths, within learning how to serve a ball, you know, playing tennis and PE. So it's got to be within the lessons. It's not an add-on, which actually makes it a lot easier for teachers, because you're not trying to do something else. It's not taking up more time. So that's hugely beneficial. I think the biggest go-to for this is teachers sharing their expertise. So when we're stood at the front of the room, we're experts. Our knowledge is coming out. We know the curriculum inside out. We know how it links together. We've got those strong mental models. We've got the coherency of the curriculum. We know why that topic goes before that topic goes before that topic. We know why knowing this means you can know that. And equally, we've just studied that subject to a far higher level.
We sometimes have students who we feel know a bit more, but 99.99% of the time, we know more than the students. And we've obviously done far more education in our subject area. Definitely got A levels, most of the time got a degree in the subject area. And what we can do as a teacher is really model that expertise. So a few things that we can do to develop metacognition is every time we make a decision as an expert, narrating that to students. So if we know that we're going to do it one way rather than another, we're actually making that explicit to students. We break down lessons into small, manageable chunks for students to understand. But do we take the time almost to narrate why we're breaking them down into those chunks? Do we take the time to narrate why we focus on that key word? Why are we focusing on that phrase? Why are we focusing on this bit of the question first?
So all of those little things that are informed by our experience or our higher level of knowledge, i.e. how am I making the decisions that the students sitting in front of me wouldn't be able to? What knowledge do they not have? What expertise do they not have that is allowing me to make this decision and sharing that with students? Because that is in effect all of our metacognition pouring out, right? Knowing how to do one thing, knowing how to do something this way rather than another way, that's our metacognition coming out because we've done it both ways before, we've reflected and we've learnt from it. So those are the top two things that I'd suggest that teachers can go and do instantly.
How do you see, Nathan, technology affecting things in this area? Because obviously we talk time and time again about the advance of technology on assessment, which obviously is rapidly changing. And how do you think technology can help in this area, particularly in relation to assessment? It’d be interesting to get your take.
I think the one thing that jumps out to me is if we link back to students knowing what to revise. It's a really hard thing to know what to revise because we've got to kind of defeat human nature, which is that I'm just going to do the stuff which is easy. Hence, it's normally the stuff I already know. And we also know that it's hard to improve an individual's judgment of self. It's really hard to get our own self-reflections in line with how good we actually are at something. There's normally a difference if we have overconfidence and we think we're better than we are, or we have those students who are really anxious and they don't think they can do anything, even though they're always getting 80%. So that judgment of self, how good am I, is really quite difficult. I think that's maybe where technology, from a metacognitive perspective, from a more effective revision perspective, could be helpful in terms of almost identifying those areas on behalf of students.
I know that teachers will often do QLAs after students have done mocks, and we go by eye in determining what students need to work on. But actual systems and programs, identifying that for students on a student by student basis. Because there starts to be technology out there, homework platforms where they do retrieval quizzes based upon the homeworks that students have done for the last 6, 10, 12 weeks. Let's say to a student, these are the things you're constantly getting wrong. But going into a little bit more depth, you know, are there links between the topics that students keep getting wrong? Are there critical skills that students just aren't getting, which is why they keep getting these questions wrong? So I think that to me is probably the most obvious place that technology could quite quickly become helpful for students in becoming more effective learners. Because that's what we want.
We know that as the years go on, standards are just going to become higher and higher and higher and higher. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that just going to university and getting a degree was the highest level of thing. I know for me now it's like - you don't have a master's degree? Oh dear, you're behind other people in the pecking order. I'm like, what's it going to be in a few years? Everyone's got to have a doctorate? We know that things are just going to keep going up and up. So there's a limit to how hard we can make the curriculum, whereas if we can make revision and learning more effective and get individuals to focus in on exactly what it is they're struggling on and removing the biases, the self-bias or the teacher bias or whatever it might be and actually having AI and tech help us do that, I think that would be the most helpful thing that jumps out to me right now.
That's absolutely brilliant, Nathan. Thank you so much for your time. Can you let people know where they can hear more from you or get in contact with you if they want to hear more about Metacognition?
Yeah, absolutely. X and Blue Sky, just @Mr. Metacognition. LinkedIn is just Nathan Burns. And then there's also my website as well, which is mrmetacognition.com. Basically, if you put Mr. Metacognition anywhere, I will be there. There was even a time when I had to TikTok for a little bit, but I got really confused by it after a week. So you won't find me on TikTok anymore. But otherwise any other normal social media platform, if you put Mr. Metacognition in, then I will pop up!
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