On Thinking Routines and Metacognition
The Strathclyde Institute of Education’s Jonathan Firth reflects on the various approaches to supporting students’ thinking skills.
I was recently asked whether I thought that the Thinking Routines Toolbox helped with metacognition. Thinking Routines are the work of Project Zero at the Harvard School of Education, and feature short, generic tasks that prompt learners to think about any stimulus. For example, they may be given a curriculum-relevant picture or graph, and be prompted with the routine, “I see ... I think ... I wonder.”
Do these tasks prompt metacognition? To answer this question, we need to consider what metacognition is. It is usually defined in terms of learners thinking about their own thinking. This could include thinking about learning, for example by selecting a strategy, monitoring their own progress, or reflecting on their performance after a task. Metacognition is considered a hallmark of a successful learner; I’ve written more about Metacognition.
So, does the prompt ‘I see ... I think ... I wonder’ causes learners to engage in metacognition? I’d suggest that generally, it will not. I have seen this used in classes as a starter, and certainly it can be engaging. It invites learners to think about something. But they are not necessarily thinking about thinking, and as such, the task doesn’t ensure that they are being metacognitive.
One way that the routine mentioned above could become metacognitive would be if learners selected it as a strategy (from among a list of options), and then used it autonomously to approach a task or problem, rather than the teacher asking them to do so. But, honestly, it’s hard to see why anyone would want to do this, as the routine is not especially helpful for independent learning. Selecting study strategies is not the only way that a student can engage in metacognition, but it’s one of the most important, as it underpins their capacity to study independently.
Other thinking routines are more promising. One, titled “I used to think ... and now I think ...”, is almost guaranteed to prompt at least some metacognition. If we are asked to think about what we used to think, then we must be thinking about our own (past) thinking, and so, engaging in metacognition by definition. Is it the most useful form of metacognition, however? Probably not, at least in my view. There are other more important things that an educator can focus on, such as teaching students strategies for tackling problems, how to avoid common errors in their coursework, or how to ensure that what they study sticks in their memory.
Overall, visible thinking routines do prompt learners to think. In line with general approach of developing thinking skills, they have the advantage of being generic across situations. Unfortunately, however, there is a problem with this approach: metacognition and strategic thinking are often most successful when they develop in context, rather than being promoted in more generic forms.
For example, it’s useful for students to learn the strategy of skim reading, but this will only help when they are reading a text. And it’s useful to learn the strategy of not conflating correlation and causation, but it’s a strategy that won’t help outside of situations where they are dealing with statistics. Other strategies are still more subject/context-specific.
For this reason, most recent reviews of research, for example the EEF’s Guidance Report on Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning recommend that metacognition is developed in a way that is directly connected to curriculum content, rather than via generic thinking skills classes.
Teachers may, of course, find some useful applications of the visible thinking routines, connecting them to the coursework in their own classroom. And if we want to begin a conversation about thinking and learning – which I believe is a good idea as part of an introduction to metacognition – then routines such as talking about our own beliefs or recognising how and when we change our minds can certainly be part of the mix.
Find out more about metacognition on the Strathclyde Institute of Education’s MSc Education Studies, or via our CLPL programme.
Published 10/02/2025
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay