Metacognition & Mindfulness: The Perfect Pairing

How can Mindfulness and Metacognition impact teaching and learning together?

As posited in the previous post, 'Mindfulness in Schools: Impact on Neural Networks of the Brain' a gap exists between the cognitive and socio-emotional domains of learning and actual academic impact of mindfulness-based interventions in schools. In other words, mindfulness based interventions (MBI) have not garnered the desired impact on actual academic performance of students. Something is amiss, evidently. And it's time to figure out, what it may be.

Metacognition, widely defined as "thinking about thinking" offers a promising balance to MBI, offsetting tendencies to minimize MBI as "Transcendental Meditation (looking to) solve the massive failure of our educational system" (Comment by Jeffrey H. via LinkedIn). Mindfulness is defined as present, moment to moment, non-judgmental and non-reactive awareness (Kabat-Zinn, 2012/2016).

Though these two concepts, offer several overlapping similarities, it is still important to point out how they are distinct entities which can be highly complementary.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness in classrooms offer teachers and students the opportunity to be keenly alert and aware of themselves, their sensations, their reactions, their environment and others. In his book, Calm, Alert Learning, Stuart Shankar asks: "How do we enhance a child's capacity for sustained optimal attention" (Shankar, 2013, p. 47)? This state of awareness brings attention to the present moment and the events unfolding in it. "The major purpose of mindfulness is to cultivate consciousness towards our experiences, mental processes and action" (Hussain, 2015, p. 137).

Metacognition

Metacognition involves students/teachers knowing themselves as learners, knowing about the task they have to complete, and knowing which strategies to use in the completion of those tasks (Adolescent Literacy Guide, 2016, p. 31) (Hussain, 2015, p. 133). Metacognition includes two capacities: the capacity to know or have knowledge of one's own cognitive processes (ie. how one processes information) and the capacity to regulate this knowledge (ie. alter/enhance an approach to learning which aligns with optimal levels of cognitive processes) (Hussain, 2015).

Link between Mindfulness and Metacognition

What is clear is that one process is almost interdependent of the other. One cannot be "thinking about one's thinking" without being aware of oneself first. Awareness precedes knowledge about cognition and cognitive regulation of those processes. In fact, the greater the awareness, the greater the ability to truly "know" how one is learning or which strategies are being used when engaging with a task.

To this end, mindfulness goes hand-in-hand with metacognition. The power of metacognition to enhance student learning has been documented (Adolescent Literacy Guide, 2016). Unfortunately, a huge piece of the puzzle, Mindfulness, has been missed. The ability to cultivate Mindful Awareness and then be able to think metacognitively about how the learning is happening, offers the potential for greater student academic outcomes, when those processes are regulated and informed by this meta-awareness.