Roger Sutcliffe, Director of DialogueWorks and Creator of the Thinking Moves A-Z

As Kate Hosey said in her blog post in 2022, some students – perhaps many – can “find it hard to motivate themselves to be more active in their learning”.

There may be various reasons for this, some of which may be related to social trends beyond the classroom. This blog post is not intended to offer a cure for all of those!

What it offers is a simple suggestion, that students might be more engaged with their learning if they saw it as a way of developing skills for life – followed by another, as to how that desired outcome might be reached.

What do we mean by ‘learning’?

The word ‘learning’ is ambiguous between content – what is learnt – which is typically ‘subject’-based, and process – the daily slog, and sometimes satisfaction, of ‘studying’.

Many students, if not most, see learning predominantly as the former – the acquisition of stipulated knowledge, rather than the development of smart skills for life.

But what could be smarter than cognitive – essentially, thinking – skills? (Well, perhaps metacognitive ones – but watch this space!)

If only the teaching and learning process explicitly promoted and practised such skills, then maybe, just maybe, more students would value and engage with the process.

How could this ideal be reached? The key is in the word ‘explicitly’. Any taught lesson, at any level and in any subject, demands of the students a variety of thinking skills. (If not, it cannot be worth its salt!)

How often are these demands spelled out? To be fair, the best teachers will do this, if not in advance of a learning task, then afterwards, by way of explaining how it could have been done better.

But there are still two challenges to be overcome.

Developing a shared language for thinking skills

I recognised the first of these challenges about 15 years ago, when I was commissioned to teach some teachers (more) about thinking skills. It is that there is no common language for teachers and learners to talk about thinking skills, nor indeed any appreciation of the full range of such skills.

That was when I set about creating Thinking Moves A-Z, a list of the 26 most fundamental cognitive skills – which has the further merit of being easy to learn and use.

This scheme enables teachers to be clear what sorts of thinking they are expecting students to practise in any given lesson. Typically, they might highlight two or three metacognitive ‘moves’ per lesson for the students to focus on, but over a term or year they might aim to cover as full a range as possible.

The second challenge is that, ultimately, the aim is for students not only to be more aware of their capacity for different sorts of thinking – what I sometimes call their ‘brain powers’ – but to practise those skills independently: to see themselves as, and indeed to be, ‘good thinkers’.

That, of course, is the point at which those skills can properly be called ‘metacognitive’ – when students are not just thinking about their thinking, but doing so with purpose and with proficiency.

Inspiration, aspiration, and commitment

But I must return to the main question of this blog, namely how to get students to appreciate this ultimate aim, and to engage with it.

As to the appreciation, I have already hinted that simply providing students with a common and complete vocabulary for thinking about thinking is likely to be interesting, if not inspiring, to them.
What student would not be impressed to be told that their brain/mind is capable of 26 different ‘moves’, and indeed has been making them daily – but without their even realising it?

And then what student would not aspire to become better at some, if not all, of these moves – to become ‘good’ at thinking AHEAD (predicting or aiming), for example, or thinking BACK (remembering or reflecting)?

Of course, some students will still need to be encouraged – motivated – to commit themselves to this aspiration, and to the journey involved.

Getting better at EXPLAINING, for example, involves long-term commitment to expanding one’s vocabulary, and to deploying words with care.

Getting better at WEIGHING UP (evaluating) involves deep commitment to open-mindedness and fairness.

And getting better at balancing ZOOMING OUT and ZOOMING IN involves commitment to the move most fundamental for metacognition – being able to step back from time to time and look at the whole picture, before deciding which aspect to focus on next – a balancing cycle we all repeat all the time, again usually without realising it.

Unlocking the full benefits of metacognition

Metacognition is not just the ability to manage your thinking better in various ways. It is the ability, I maintain, to manage your whole self – your feelings and actions as well as your thinking.

That includes the ability to recognise what is in your interest as well as what you are interested in, and to commit to some actions that might not be as appealing as others.

I realise that it is asking a lot of young people to reach the level of self-awareness where they are completely self-motivated in this way. So, I repeat that young people need steady encouragement from their teachers to be better thinkers, as well as just better learners.

But I think that there is an even greater intrinsic value to becoming more metacognitive – more self-aware and more self-managing.

To sum up, then, I am saying that part of motivating students to become metacognitive is to spell out to them what metacognition is, so that they know how they could actively develop that capacity in themselves.

In my next blog post, I will do a bit more explaining of metacognition, since I think it is not as well understood, even by educationalists, as it might be. ‘Thinking about your thinking’ is a good starting explanation, but it lacks some vital ingredients. Other accounts are similarly too narrow, and rather formulaic.

Metacognition is potentially a key to fuller and richer living, not just more proficient learning. It should, then, be a driving concept for all schools and teachers.

Roger Sutcliffe is Director of DialogueWorks and Creator of the Thinking Moves A-Z. He taught at both junior and senior level (English and Maths) for over 25 years, and has been an independent educational consultant, specialising in Philosophy for Children and Teaching Thinking, for the last 25 years. He is a Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching.

Roger is currently collaborating with NACE on a four-part course based on the Thinking Moves A-Z, open to schools across all phases and contexts. If you missed the first session, it’s not too late to join! Contact us to arrange access to the recording of Session 1, and live participation in the remaining three sessions.