Metacognitive Illusions
Jonathan Firth's Memory & Metacognition Updates #53
We’re now deep into the term/semester, and I hope things are going well.
Last Friday, I was giving a talk on metacognitive illusions to St. Andrews RC Secondary in Glasgow (along with the brilliant Bruce Robertson and several other speakers).
I thought I’d share some of the main points from my talk with you today.
For anyone from the school who signed up to this newsletter—welcome, and this recap can act as some spaced practice!
Foundations
I began with some foundations. I think that to understand metacognition, you need to have an understanding of cognition, and in particular, the role of forgetting and the distinction between performance and learning. Once you appreciate that much of what is achieved in lessons is short-lived, it becomes easier to see why students would believe that they know more than they actually do.
What is Metacognition?
Next up, a definition of metacognition itself. The term has been defined in various ways, but teachers often find the simplest one the best: the idea that metacognition is thinking about thinking.
A little nuance comes in when we consider multiple cognitive processes—memory, thinking, attention, and so on. Each of these processes can reflect on itself or on others, such as paying attention to thinking, or remembering a memory. All of these things are types of metacognition.
Evidence of Illusions
I then shared a couple of really powerful examples of metacognitive illusions:
Kornell & Bjork (2008) found that although most learners did better with interleaved practice, a large majority incorrectly believed that they had learned better via a blocked schedule*.
Singer Trakhman et al. (2023) found that although students understood ideas better when reading on paper, they incorrectly thought that they had learned better from reading on screens.
Both effects are part of a larger research literature that suggests people mistake ease for efficacy. If learning feels easier, a student will often think that it is working better (if you’re wondering if this connects to desirable difficulties, you’d be right!).
Teacher Metacognition; Myths
Finally I discussed some widespread myths about learning. I shared the evidence that flawed ideas such as learning styles are often endorsed by teachers, showing that it’s not just learners who fall prey to illusions. Further, it seems that experience (years in the classroom) is not enough to overcome this issue.
Overall, the idea of metacognitive illusions demonstrates how hard it is for learners to say what ‘works for them’, or to judge their learning at all. We have no direct insight into our learning as it happens, and are often misled by assumptions or by flawed ideas that we have picked up.
Understanding that we can’t always trust our intuitions about how to learn is the first step in informing ourselves.
I really enjoyed my talk, and my time spent at St. Andrews. We hear a lot of negative things in the press about schools and teachers, but the reality is often quite different. During my visit, I met a lot of inspiring teachers with an enthusiasm for professional learning. I believe that an enthusiasm for understanding the science of learning is growing, and you are part of that movement, too.
That’s all for now. Enjoy your week 😎
Jonathan
Last week: Overcoming the Attention Barrier
Website: www.jonathanfirth.co.uk
New book – What Teachers Need to Know about Memory: (UK link | US link)
*It’s worth noting that Kornell & Bjork’s original paper talks about spacing, but more recently, these and other researchers would refer to the specific task as an example of interleaving. However, there are illusions about spacing, too!
Please note that my materials are shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.