The science underneath
Knowing what you know
In shortKnowing whether you have understood is its own skill, and it can be off even when the work is right.
The idea
Realising you have not understood is itself a calculation the brain makes, and it can fail even when the task goes well, or work when the task fails. There are several steps: predicting how it will go, noticing an error, judging confidence, changing strategy. A child may know how to do something but not notice the moment they are lost. Telling them ‘ask for help when you do not understand’ assumes they notice they have not understood.
What to try
- Before a task ask ‘how do you think it will go?’; afterwards, ‘how did it go?’, and compare.
- Show what good work looks like before starting, so there is something to compare with.
- Help notice signs of being lost (rereading the same line, looking around) and what to do at those moments.
The common mistake
Inferring that metacognition improved just because the person says so. Self-reports and actual performance can diverge.
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The science behind itHow strong the evidence is, the model, videos and references.
How strong the evidence is
Promising Good studies, but little tested with children at home or school, or the step to daily life is our interpretation.
Fleming and Daw (2017) describe metacognition as second-order Bayesian inference about one’s own performance. Bryce and Eberhart (2026) show that greater working-memory updating and inhibition requirements reduce monitoring accuracy in children aged 7 and 9; Yuan and Du (2026) find that 90 of 94 effects in technology interventions on metacognition were self-report. Assess as a sequence (prediction, detection, confidence, strategy change) under simple and complex conditions; externalise monitoring temporarily and then fade it.
References
- Fleming, S. M., & Daw, N. D. (2017). Self-evaluation of decision-making: a general Bayesian framework for metacognitive computation. Psychological Review, 124(1), 91–114.
- Bryce & Eberhart (2026). Testing the dependency of metacognitive monitoring and executive functions in children. Metacognition and Learning.
- Yuan & Du (2026). Technology-supported interventions and learners’ metacognition: a three-level meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review.
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