METACOGNITION, PUPIL EMPOWERMENT AND THE SCHOOL CONTEXT

The purpose of this article is to explore the notion of metacognition with a view to clarifying its signficance for the development of teaching and learning strategies which enhance pupils' capacities as autonomous learners. It is argued that metacognition is a form of self-knowledge which is not fundamentaLly different from a form of self-knowledge; and that such knowledge can be interpreted as involving understanding of a wide range of social and psychological processes. Two key questions which relate to the specific context of the school are then discussed: one to do with the relationship between metacognition and school subject knowledge, and the other with the connection between metacognition and the various discourses of school learning. A number of studies of intervention strategies derived from different theoretical and methodological contexts are then briefly reviewed.