Hello and welcome to another memory and metacognition update! This will be the second last one that I send this academic year, because we all need a holiday before too long, myself included! And of course, time for reflection.For a lot of practitioners, memory is the system that underpins learning, while metacognition is more about students' self-regulation and their use of study skills.And while that is partly true, we teachers engage in metacognition too.For example, when a teacher plans for learning, this is a form of metacognition (because they are thinking about thinking/learning). Metacognition is involved when teachers reflect on their own practice, too, trying to gauge what has been learned, and using this to inform future actions.In many ways, metacognition – thinking about thinking/learning – is even more of a day-to-day task for us than it is for students.However, it also suffers from the same problems and illusions that I have discussed in previous newsletters:If a teacher doesn't understand desirable difficulties, then in their planning they may avoid some of the most effective ways to get new learning to stick.If they tend to mistake performance for learning, then they may mistakenly believe that a class have learned something, and that it doesn't require further consolidation.In general, if a teacher doesn't understand how learning works, then how can they reflect upon it accurately?An additional problem that arises is that memory is often inaccurate – as has been shown in research that has studied eyewitnesses to crimes. A teacher may reflect on what they think happened in a lesson, but it's highly unlikely that their recollection is perfect!I talk about some of these issues in more depth in the following short article: