Self‐regulation and metacognition in young children: Does it matter if adults are present or not?

Abstract

This paper brings together two areas of considerable interest to researchers, practitioners and policy makers: young children's developing self‐regulation and metacognition, and the impact of adult (practitioner) presence or absence on their behaviour and learning. One hundred and twenty‐eight observations of 29 children aged 4–5 years in a reception class were analysed using a behavioural coding scheme. While the data show that adult presence and absence were both supportive, children were often significantly more likely to show evidence of self‐regulation and metacognition when adults were absent. When present, adults were a focus for the children's attention, and children appeared to cede some responsibility to them, more frequently looking to adults to set goals, allocate roles, check and correct progress and resolve disputes. At the same time, adults played a crucial role in supporting children's procedural knowledge when they were present. Children were keen to display their knowledge to these significant people and often chose to direct their comments to adults. It is suggested that the question of how adults can supportively become involved in young children's activity deserves closer attention, particularly in the context of the development and display of young children's self‐regulation and metacognition.

The Impact of Teacher-Initiated Activities on Identifying and Verbalizing Ways of Metacognitive Monitoring and Control in Six-Year-Old Children

“…According to Brinck and Liljenfors (2013), metacognition needs to be related not only with the use of languages, symbols, and logical reasoning, but also with perceptual associations, emotions, motivation, and attention (especially while evaluating metacognitive expressions in children at a very early age). Flavell, 1979;Brown, 1987;Lee et al, 2009;Bryce & Whitebread, 2012;Marulis, 2014;Robson, 2016). Brinck and Liljenfors (2013) make theoretical assumptions that the most important metacognitive regulation processes are monitoring and control.…”

“…Therefore, among children whose metacognitive knowledge is more comprehensive and who are able to apply their metacognitive skills in learning activities from three to five years of age, cognitive and metacognitive development is anticipated to be more advanced and their academic achievements higher. It has been established that metacognition stimulates self-regulated learning (Robson, 2010(Robson, , 2016 and influences the child's choice of strategies for individual learning (Chatzipanteli, Grammatikopoulos, & Gregoriadis, 2014). Metacognition has a certain effect on the quality of critical thinking (Magno, 2010) and on the relationship with better and more effective problem-solving skills (Lee, Teo, & Bergin, 2009).…”

“…The metacognitive regulation in four-to six-year-olds encompasses processes of planning, monitoring, control, and evaluation. According to Whitebread et al (2009), Robson (2010Robson ( , 2016, Rowe (2018), and others, any behavior or verbalization related to foreseeing a task and the choice of procedures for its implementation is considered planning. Monitoring refers to any behavior or verbalization related to a constant evaluation of the way a task is performed, observing one's own cognitive processes, ways of acting, and emerging problems.…”

“…However, stimulating the development of children's metacognitive regulation still remains a great challenge for teachers. Moreover, one of Robson's (2016) studies aimed at identifying the activity (a child's activity with an adult or with other children in the absence of an adult) more beneficial to the development of metacognitive skills yielded some unexpected results: A child engaging in activity without an adult's presence is much more useful for developing metacognitive regulation. Such results contradict the findings of other researchers.…”

Learning from learning logs: A case study of metacognition in the primary school classroom

“…More recently, however, classroom‐based research has used more sensitive methodologies to investigate the metacognitive abilities with much younger pupils. For example, classroom‐based observational tools have identified indictors of metacognitive knowledge and regulation from the ages of 3 to 4 years old (Whitebread et al ., ; Robson, ,). In addition, visual tools have been developed that elicit children's understanding of their own thinking and learning through concept maps (Ritchhart et al ., ) and pupil views templates (PVTs; see Wall, ; Wall et al ., ).…”