The Truth About Metacognition | A Conversation with Nathan Burns

We might not understand metacognition, but we're all metacognitive experts. You know, there will be some stuff we've never heard the phrase, but actually, there'll be incredibly metacognitive because we can't do our job without planning, monitoring, evaluating, etc. So actually, by making these skills that we have visible to students, it can really help make it something that students can grasp onto and see and start to develop in their own learning. Hey, everyone. I'm Shane Leaning.

Welcome to Education Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you. As an organizational coach, I've helped thousands of leaders across the world lead with greater confidence, make better decisions and create winning teams. And on this show, we explore the strategies that are going to help you achieve your goals and transform your leadership. Before we jump in, I'm excited that today's episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Stay tuned to learn more. Now my guest today is Nathan Burns,

better known as Mr. Metacognition. He has spent over half a decade becoming one of the UK's leading experts in metacognitive theory and practice. He's the author of Great Box and has written for major publications across the UK. And he's worked with schools in the UK and internationally,

especially delivering metacognitive training programs. And in our conversation today, Nathan breaks down exactly what metacognition is, why it's not actually a new concept despite the recent hype. And most importantly, shares some practical strategies that school leaders can implement when the time is right. So let's jump right in. So what is metacognition? I mean,

it really is the big question. And I don't have a clear answer for you. And I think I always go into my training sessions, always begin my discussions and I say, actually, what we're looking at here is something that's quite complicated, something that there are a lot of definitions on, and none of them actually explain to us all that well what metacognition is. So if I do go to those definitions, let's begin by considering them. So there were a couple of

definitions I use, the first one being from John Flavell, early 70s. This was at the beginning really of when sort of metacognitive literature and education literature began to come together, and we began to think about what metacognition looked like in education. And Flavell wrote, I'll misquote it quite badly now, but it was along the lines of metacognition is if I understand that I'm having more difficulty learning A than B, if I double check C before accepting it as fact. So Flavell, in that definition, is really getting at this idea of us understanding what it is we're finding quite easy to learn or why we're finding things quite easy. Or it's our own understanding of, well, why am I finding this difficult?

What is it about this topic? What is it about this strategy that I'm using that means I'm struggling? You know, is there a piece of information that I'm missing? Is there something that I need support from, you know, from the teacher, from the teaching assistant? You know, what is it that I'm struggling with? And that double checking C,

it's that idea of, you know, that gut feeling we have when we do something we go, yeah, I've got a gut feeling, I've done that right. Or even we go, Oh, actually, that doesn't quite feel right. I don't think that's right. And actually, that's quite an intellectual, that's quite an academic feeling, because it's based upon knowledge of what things should look like. It's based upon our understanding of curricula, our understanding of what this

product or this outcome should be. So I go to sort of a bit of a silly maths example. But if we've answered 10 questions, and the first nine are all positive answers, they're all whole numbers. But then question 10, we get a negative answer. And it's a decimal, there'd be something

in our gut that just goes, hmm, that doesn't quite feel right. Can I ask on this? I mean, this is interesting, because, you know, you're speaking to intuition. What's really occurring to me, Nathan, is we started a conversation on metacognition, and you've gone back to the 1970s. And yet, a lot of discourse would have you believe that

metacognition is this brand new thing that has just come in, right? Oh, yes. I mean, this is one of the great things about education, isn't it? Something happens, and then we forget about it. And then it all suddenly comes back in, in new packaging,

and it's all shiny again. And I mean, metacognition, and we'll get into it, it's just a real fundamental of effective learning. And I mean, learning has been happening for hundreds, thousands of years, it's not something new, we may be discovering how exactly we learn and how exactly we can we can develop knowledge. But actually, those processes have always been there.

So yeah, metacognition isn't something new. There's plenty of literature on it from a very long time ago. And actually, there's a lot of literature, especially from sort of America, in the early 70s, having a look at what metacognition looks like in the gas education in regards to that learning process. So you are right, is this something new and shiny? I mean,

in the UK, the Education Endowment Foundation report, which I think first came out about seven years ago, but that was sort of almost like learning to learn from the early noughties kind of like rebranded, it was this brand new thing. But actually, again, a lot of the literature that they draw upon in their report is literature that's been out for 10, 20, 30, 50 years. And actually, a lot of this isn't new, but it is about understanding what all of that literature and research tells us and sort of building in, I guess, to our mental model of understanding how we learn and how we develop curricula and how we teach effectively. So actually, I think it's probably come back round again, but I think we've got a far better understanding of what is now and what it looks like in the classroom, I think.

Got it. Well, straight away, that's quite reassuring, actually, I think to many leaders who will be listening in to go, okay, it's not that if I'm going on a journey and learning about medical condition that I need to start from scratch, there's probably some things that I'm already aware of and know. Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things for school leaders believe that this is going to be a brand new thing, and it's going to take up a significant amount of time. It's going to take up, you know, all of the teaching and

learning resources that they have all of that professional development time, whereas actually, this is something that we can build into what we're already doing. I often talk about metacognition, almost like being the ivy around the fence of everything else that we're doing, we can actually sort of incorporate metacognition into everything we're doing. I mean, if we think about a good lesson, we think about effective modeling, we think about effective questioning, we think about maybe effective discussion tasks, maybe effective assessment for learning, we do all of those things naturally, but we can almost place a metacognitive lens over all of those and all of those areas actually just provide us with opportunities to begin to develop metacognition further in our students. Awesome. So let's bring this to life then. Like, where did we go from John Favell's exploration?

Where did we go next? Where are we getting to with our definition nowadays? Yeah, absolutely. So the other definition that I use, this is maybe sort of a self-plagiarism, I don't know, but I always just go back to my own definition. So even though there's so much

literature out there, and there are a lot of definitions, and there's lots of confusion, I thought, you know what, I'll do, I'll add to that, I'll have my own definition. And I was definitely coming out, it was sort of a teacher head on a very practical head, because my definition is along the lines of metacognition is the little voice inside your head is guiding your planning and your evaluation. And to me, what metacognition really is, it's that constant process of going back, what is it I need to do? When am I going to get it done by what went well last time? What am I going to do differently? What support do I need?

Get in on with the task. And then, well, how am I going to get better next time? You know, where are my weaknesses? What do I need to work on? But how am I going to work on it?

What support do I need to get? And really, metacognition is this self-evaluation, self-improvement process that we go through. It's almost like helicopter thinking, all of the cognition is happening, the maths is happening, the football is happening, whatever, you know, all the skills are happening. And it's that kind of zoomed out evaluation of, well, what things are going right? Why are they going right? What am I going to keep the same?

And what isn't quite going to plan? What isn't working as it should? Where are my outcomes, not where they need to be? And so what am I going to do to act on that? What am I going to

do to improve on that? So it's not necessarily, oh, how am I going to fix this one question? It's, you know, generally, how am I going to fix this topic? What support do I need?

Do I need to speak to the TA? Do I need to use a knowledge organizer? All of those different things we'd go through to sort of lead to improvement in our outcomes. I'm going to utilize the Nathan Burns definition in the future, because so it's the little voice in your head that's guiding the decisions we make.

Yeah, you're forcing the actions, the sort of the planning and the evaluation that you make. Yeah. Can we take that a step further? Like, how would this look in the school in the classroom?

Absolutely. So I think if we take it a little bit further, it actually helps us to understand exactly what metacognition is, because I think we've explored both of those definitions. And I think it helps us somewhat understand what metacognition is. But it's still quite a complicated topic. Those definitions are helpful, to an extent,

once you've explained them a little bit. But I think actually understanding sort of the theory behind metacognition actually helps us understand it better and then allows us to understand what we need to do in the classroom. So if you go through all of the literature, and you sort of take that deep dive into sort of what metacognition is, we sort of come across two different strands of metacognition. On one aspect, we've got the knowledge of our cognition. So that is,

what is our knowledge of task? So, you know, what am I supposed to be doing? How long do I have to do it? What layout does the question need to be?

We've then got knowledge of self. So what information do I need to include in my response? You know, what information have I been asked for? Out of all of the information that I know, what do I need to include to successfully answer that task? And then we've got our knowledge of

strategies as well. So given this task, given what I'm supposed to do, how am I going to go about doing it? Because often we know there's more than one way of doing something. So that's one aspect of metacognition, that knowledge of cognition, the knowledge of task, the knowledge of self, and the knowledge of strategies. And then we come to the other side of metacognition,

which is the side that most educators are aware of, and that's regulation of cognition. And to put that into layman's terms, that is planning, monitoring, and evaluation. And that is often a process that we're familiar with. We'll ask our students to plan out their task. We'll ask

them to make sure that they're on track and they're making corrections as they go through things that they're monitoring. And then once students have completed a task, we get them to evaluate. So whether we give them the answers and we get them to mark, whether they compare to a mark scheme, whether they actually do a bit of self evaluation and they try and work out, you know, what's gone well, what they need to focus on next time. So in effect, I've started calling these almost the pillars or the foundations of metacognition. So that's knowledge of task,

self and strategies, and then plan, monitor and evaluate. And that actually gives us six areas that we can think about as leaders and as teachers in the classroom, six areas that we can begin to focus on and develop in our students. So metacognition is this big invisible thing. We know that it's all around us. It's like the air around us, right? We know it's there,

but we can't see it. The metacognition, that evaluation of how is something going? How am I going to tackle something? We know it's there. I'm doing it right now. You're doing

it right now. Students will hopefully be doing it in lessons, but we still can't see it. So actually, if we've got these six sort of foundations, these six sort of pillars of metacognition, it gives us something that we can really try to improve in our own classrooms. That's a very helpful framing. So am I right? Like, so I'm just trying to synthesize this,

Nathan. So those knowledge areas, these are what we want students or we want, you know, the people we teach to have, right? They have this knowledge and the regulation is what's happening live. Absolutely. So with teachers, when approaching metacognition,

is the idea that there should be some kind of pre-teaching to kind of build this knowledge, and then there should be activities that promote regulation ongoing? Is that kind of how it would work? Yes, to a large extent. So take, for example, planning. If we wanted to improve

planning our students, actually, there's a bit of a cheat code that I can explain to us here, actually, planning is just those knowledge of areas. So if we want somebody to plan, we want them to think about their knowledge of their task, their knowledge of their self, and their knowledge of their strategies, that is effective planning. So actually, if we want to develop the planning of our students in the classroom, one of the strategies that I go and work with teachers on, it's just a really simple planning template. I mean, we've got hundreds of planning templates out there, right? Different schools, we use

different planning templates for different times. And here, I'm introducing another, but actually a really simple grid, three columns, top of the left-hand column, knowledge of task, or what do I have to do? Middle column, knowledge of self, or what facts do I need to include? That third column, knowledge of strategies, or how am I going to do it? Students have a look at

the task, and then they note down in each of those columns, what is it they have to do? What information they need to include? How they're going to do it? And that's a really effective plan. So would we, if we pick that strategy, or when we pick other strategies,

would we need to initially model it to students? We absolutely would. But the imperative here is that it's modeled in line with the curriculum and in line with the cognition. We can't remove the skill, and we can't remove that development from the cognition, because at the end of the day, this is metacognition. This is the evaluation,

the consideration of how the cognition is going. I always provide a bit of a silly example, but Shane, I'll pick on you here. And if we were together in the same room, and I said, Shane, please, can you go make me a cup of coffee? And you turn, you look at me, and you just go, no, if you don't go and make that cup of coffee, then you can't begin to evaluate how good your coffee making skills were.

I can't give you any feedback on that. So if the cognitive action isn't there, we can't start to do the meta. Hence, if we think about a more realistic and sensible example of in the classroom, can we develop those meta skills? Can we really develop planning and isolation? Can we develop monitoring and isolation? We can't,

not really, not effectively. So when we're thinking about metacognitive strategies that we can implement in the classroom, we can absolutely teach them explicitly, this is how you use this planning grid, but we need to demonstrate it and get students to practice using these things within the context of the content and the curriculum that they're learning about. I think as soon as we try and isolate them too much, we end up either forgetting about the curriculum, or actually spending a lot of time on something that becomes very theoretical, very abstract, and doesn't actually support our students. Imagine trying to learn a new planning technique, but having random scenarios or even no scenarios at all, and just being told how to do it, it just wouldn't work very well. This is resonating very strongly with me in my teaching practice.

When I was learning to teach, we would often start units or even start the year with kind of that learning to learn, as you mentioned earlier, like looking at learning to learn strategies. But what you've just highlighted is why it didn't click with me at the time, or I felt like I wasn't getting impact. We were teaching these strategies cold, and then it felt like then it was over to the students, and then we'd crack on with the content. What you're saying is that it's got to be context embedded, it's got to be embedded in the cognition. Absolutely. We've got to choose the right strategies at the

right times. For example, when I go in and work with schools, whatever, I normally have about 40 to 50 different strategies that we could use in the classroom to try to develop those six pillars. But if we're choosing the wrong strategy at the wrong time, it's not going to work. I'll give an example, slightly different context, but I went to go and observe a few lessons at a school recently, really, really, really good school, and it was a fantastic lesson. Students were engaging really,

really well in this geography lesson, really, really high quality revision, and students were given three different really good revision templates. I can't quite recall which ones there were, but three really good templates that all would stimulate really good thinking. But there was only one of them that was really suitable to what it was students needed to revise. But then when you went to go and ask students why they chose one or the other, it was because, oh, my friend chose it. Oh, actually, it's my favourite one to use. Oh,

it's the one I always use. And actually, of those 12 students I spoke to, only two were really doing the effective thing because they'd chosen the correct strategy for that revision. And it's the same when we're choosing these metacognitive strategies. We can have loads of really good strategies, but it is about choosing the strategy at the right time, so at the right point in the content for the skill we're wanting to develop.

So that planning grid, it's a really effective way of getting students to think about what planning means because too often in the classroom, we insist our students plan. You need to plan, you need to prepare, you know it's important, but students don't necessarily know what that means. We might go and use this planning grid because it makes it clear to students the three areas they need to work on, but there'd be no point using it for a one mark answer. For example, just because it's a good strategy, there are times and places where it's suitable, and there are times and places where it isn't suitable. And it's the same with a lot of these strategies.

We've got to use them within the content so they make some sort of sense, and we've got to use them at a time where it's actually helpful to develop the skill that we're wanting to develop. We're not going to want lengthy plans for a one mark definition, but we are going to want good effective plans for a 10 mark question, or for a piece of coursework, or for a longer homework project. So it's about using them within that content at the appropriate times. It sounds like therefore it would be useful to develop a toolkit of strategies, you know, as a teacher that you can then draw from, which may be intimidating to someone. I wonder like most of the

listeners of this podcast are leaders, you know, in schools around the world. Many of them might be thinking, I'm tuning into this podcast because I hear this word a lot, and maybe I'm not 100% confident, but I know I should be doing something because everyone's doing something on this. You deal with lots of schools all the time who are probably starting that journey. I'd love to kind of get your thoughts on when do you think is kind of the right time to start thinking about, you know, bringing in a metacognition focus because it's going to take a bit of work, right? Absolutely. I mean, in

the dream scenario, I walk into a school and they say to me, right, let's begin with the five year plan. And I think that's really important. If you are in a situation where you're needing a quick win, you're needing to turn around behaviour, you're needing, you know, a really quick boost to student attainment, and you can do that by getting routines correct or a new behaviour policy, whatever it might be. If you're in a situation where you're just needing that quick win or you're needing something that can get you on to the right track, then that is metacognition at that point in time. To me, the school that's ready

for metacognition is the school where they're ready to incorporate a five year plan. It's the type of school where there are already strong foundations in place. It's a school where you can walk into any classroom and you can see effective modelling and effective questioning and students are sat and they're ready to learn and they're engaging. But you're looking for the next step.

It's what is the next thing? If I were to walk into a school and students aren't listening to the teacher, if I was to walk into a school and the models are unclear, well, the questioning that is being used is ineffective, then there are actually pillars of teaching and learning that need to be addressed first. So if you feel like you're in a context where actually questioning still isn't quite right or modelling maybe isn't effective or maybe behaviour just isn't there yet, then actually trying to focus on metacognition probably isn't the right next step in your journey. It will be one of the next steps in your journey, but it's unlikely to be your next one. I often find that

in the schools where they're really ready and this is something that will take their students up 1%, 5%, it's those small gains. It's the school where I go in and provide training and they say that was all really really interesting and I can see how it'd be useful, but actually none of that was a reinvention of the wheel. It's about tweaking and it's about a refocusing of what we're doing and I think that's really what metacognition is. It's impossible for us to be effective teachers without developing metacognition to some extent. We will

share our expertise, we will share our thinking processes, but actually by placing a focus on metacognition we do it more, we do it 5% more, we do it 10% more. We are clearer in what is and what is at metacognition and we can place more of a focus on it. So for example one of the other visible strategies that I often talk about is something like an exam wrapper. A lot of schools use an exam wrapper where students have to fill in some questions once they've done an assessment. Students go oh this is the

mark I think I've got, you know this is why I think I've got it, this is how I revised, this is the mark I actually got. A strategy like that schools might be using, but actually is there a way that we can adapt it? Is there a way that we can improve it to make it more metacognitive to get students to reflect more? Maybe they've got to come back and review it later on so it actually doesn't become static, it actually becomes a valuation that informs their future planning. Overall if we've got a

school where those foundations are in place for effective teaching and learning and staff are on board with continued professional development I think that's where metacognition can work, but if you know I'm walking into school and chairs are being thrown then that's not the next step in that journey. This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Now I've been working with the ICA for quite a few years but they've been around for 30 years and they've been around championing quality, unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools right around the world. I really really love that at their core is a model for improving learning and this model is focused on the learning experience and they have tons of great curriculum materials, PD resources and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours. So if

you're interested and I really do recommend you check them out head over to internationalcurriculum.com Even if you're not ready now for metacognition where is it in your plan to consider it in the future like what are you trying to solve now and where are you going rather than just saying we're not ready so that's just not for us let's not talk about it. Yeah every school leader is on the journey to improve their school and though it might not be the next best step it will be a future step. Every school is on that journey of improvement and there will come a point where metacognition does need to be that thing or it can start to be drip fed in. I mean there

were some schools now where maybe the whole school isn't ready to sort of work on these strategies but there are several departments who are doing really well and they are ready to start to have a look at these steps and then next year I work with the other departments so we can even go on a process like that so it is definitely part of the journey and it is part of a of a long-term improvement for a school whether that's a five-year plan, seven, ten-year plan whatever it might be it might not be exactly the next step and there's criticism out there of metacognition because when we have a look at the EEF report as one example they say that it will lead to seven months improved progress which if we consider an individual who isn't ever considering their planning or their evaluation versus an individual who's always planning they're always evaluating they're always driving themselves forward to improve we can see why there'd be such big attainments so instantly metacognition is the answer right if it leads to seven months improved progress it's the answer but like I said if behavior isn't quite there if routines aren't where you want them to be if you know that staff need a little bit more support on if you're embedding rosenchein's principles if you're trying to develop cold calling if you're trying to get those strong foundations of effective teaching in place let's nail them and then let's move on to metacognition after that and if you're already at that point in your journey then fantastic you're ready for that next step into the world of metacognition that's a powerful powerful reminder that metacognition we know can have huge gains yeah we know that knowledge and regulation you get that right and that learning happens better but there are a whole host of other reasons and there and there are a whole host of mitigating factors that may get in the way of that and it's not a silver bullet in that sense so just you know if you're struggling as a school and going i'm not sure what's happening here don't just kind of jump on the latest thing don't just say okay therefore metacognition that's going to be the solution look at your school first yeah absolutely it makes sense right leaders under pressure and often they're short of time not in terms of hours in the day but in terms of how long they have to make these changes schools need to improve and they need to improve quickly for the sake of their students and and the staff are working there and yes it seems like something that can give huge impact and it can but it's got to obviously come at that time where staff and students are ready to start engaging with it so let's assume we've kind of gone through we've had a look and we've said yeah actually we're ready to start engaging when you're working with schools or a leader who's going do you know i think we're kind of at their stage nathan have you got any kind of practical ideas of where they might start to think about implementation i think there's a couple of considerations here the first is if there's one of those of cornerstones one of those foundations of metacognition that you really want to work on so for example if a school is already working on perhaps assessment if they're already working on feedback strategies then actually that pillar of metacognitive evaluation makes a huge amount of sense if we can streamline what we're already doing this is the beauty of metacognition because it can intertwine with so many different areas it means that we can actually incorporate this new idea with the thing we're already working on so for example yes if you're working on assessment or feedback then evaluation would be a great thing if you as a school are trying to set your modeling up to the next level then we can maybe consider some strategies around sort of metacognitive modeling so i think it's always good to think right what are we already working on where are we on year two or year three of this plan or that plan can we start to embed metacognition in regards to that whereas some schools i know actually go about it in a different way and this term of like a wicked problem there's no obvious solution to the problem and often that wicked problem especially in the schools i'm working with now is around resilience or it's around developing independent learners and i don't think this is just a uk phenomena i think this is just teenagers and working with kids more generally and it might be that you decide actually that's the avenue you want to go down and you want to have a look at strategies that can allow students to become more independent so that's the first thing are you going to have a look at one of those pillars and are you going to try and dress one of those areas and can you tie it in with what you're already doing because we all have two birds one stone if we can already focus on modeling and introduce metacognition and get that double benefit that double hits then brilliant so that's the first area the second is actually something that we discussed shane about a month ago when we were prepping for this podcast and it sort of became really clear to me ironically about the difference between visible and invisible strategies because we've talked about metacognition being something invisible it's around us our students are hopefully doing it but we don't necessarily see it it might appear quite difficult to assess there's not a simple test what we can give students to see how metacognitive they are so do our strategies remain invisible or do we actually try and introduce visible strategies to try to make metacognition visible in the classroom and actually think that in a lot of scenarios beginning with visible strategies is actually a very helpful way to go and originally i thought how we just introducing visible strategies because it makes qa easier does it make it easier to tick box you know is it going to be there when a senior leader does a book look or something like that and then i thought well actually if it's visible it's easier for the teacher to engage with it's easier for them to embed it's easy to get the students to understand it and it makes it so much more visible and explicit if there's a physical worksheet or there is a physical thing on the board and that allows the teachers to get more feedback and to get more support from leaders as i was trying to introduce these things so yes it makes it a little bit easier to qa if we do have visible strategies going into place but i think as in the first instance if we're taking a theory that's quite complex if we're taking a theory that's invisible actually making it visible is also very helpful for our teachers so i noted down just just five strategies i know a lot of schools of particularly like this year so the first one that we spoke about so far was was the idea of the planning grade if we want to improve planning skills we could use something like that if we wanted to improve say monitoring of our students we could introduce different types of checklists so for example during that planning stage students maybe in a brief list write down all the facts they need to include or maybe they write down all the stages they need to work through or one checklist strategy is called mini questions and that's where a student is given a really big question and they break it down into lots of sub questions and the answer each one in turn so that for example is a really good monitoring strategy we could introduce if we were thinking about evaluation we might think to something like exam wrappers if we were thinking about maybe developing independent and resilient learners we might think about something like a goal-free problem where we keep the context of a question and we just get rid of the question itself so keep the context get rid of the question and just allow students to explore discuss work out anything that they can from that information or we might have a look at something like do it again which is a strategy that improves problem solving where students are given a task they've got to do it in one way they get feedback they get it marked and then they've got to do it again but utilizing a different strategy therefore developing students flexibility with a range of strategies and seeing when they should and shouldn't use a strategy and when they can become more effective so all of those are quite good visible strategies that can hit one of those different cornerstones of metacognition but by being visible it means that teachers are clear on what they need to do and it also allows us as leaders to support our staff that bit better because we're able to see it and we're able to feedback and hopefully provide additional beneficial professional developments those members of staff who are on the front line implementing this every single lesson every single day i love those really super practical strategies but i love the idea of starting with the visible not just for accountability but because actually that's almost easier to grasp and to get on with at first and i guess as a teacher you're also stretching those metacognition development muscles right and the more you do the probably the more ideas you'll have for developing yeah absolutely so i think yeah if teachers are on board with something that they can see it also allows more effective planning if you know when you're going to use these strategies because like i said that planning bridge you don't need it all the time goal-free problems you're not going to use them all the time so you can effectively put them into your curriculum into your medium and long-term planning and you can begin to revisit them over and over again get that feedback work with them at a department level and it becomes this very cooperative collaborative experience where teachers sort of get that feed and improve them and also hearing about this from a student perspective because at the end of the day why do we do what we do well it's the students that are in front of us actually if this is something visible the invisible strategies such as maybe like i've written down a few here maybe if it's keyword quizzing of students maybe as a teacher we're quite explicit in our justifications or or maybe we discuss strategy comparison they're all really helpful metacognitive tools but students might not understand what we're getting at it might not click for them whereas if it's something more visible we can keep going back to it we can draw focus and attention to it so again i think that's quite a nice way in to this sort of world of metacognition for our students because the other thing that we have is i like to think of teachers as metacognitive beasts we cannot do our jobs without being metacognitive we might not understand metacognition but we're all metacognitive experts you know there will be some stuff we've never heard the phrase but actually they'll be incredibly metacognitive because we can't do our job without planning monitoring evaluating etc so actually by making these skills that we have visible to students it can really help make it something that students can grasp onto and see and start to develop in their own learning Nathan you couldn't have ended this podcast with a more perfect statement and i think that's a perfect way to finish unless there's anything that you think is useful to share to round off i would like to end on one point as senior leaders i think we can all fall into the trap sometimes of box sticking where there's qa and where there's something that we've introduced that it's very easy to say oh look i'm going to tick the box i've used the planning grid i'm going to tick the box i've used the exam wrapper and i think what's absolutely imperative about these strategies and i think it's something that's gone wrong in previous implementation and embedding of metacognition is where these things have become box ticking exercises i've used the planning grid so i've done that i've used this so i've done that i'm fine slt are gonna say i'm green you know i'm hitting everything and i think it's imperative that we as leaders when we introduce these things give staff the agency to explore these strategies and use them where is appropriate in their curriculum because at the end of the day these strategies like we said at the start are all linked in with the cognition they're linked in with the curriculum so forcing staff members to use them at a given frequency or you know on a given day or whatever it doesn't work so giving staff the development they need to understand these strategies but then giving them the confidence and the agency to introduce them when it's suitable for their own teaching and for their own students to avoid it becoming a box tick exercise because otherwise we go back to that point of using really good strategies but not using them at the right times to get positive outcomes i loved this conversation with Nathan first i really loved his honesty about timing medical ignition is not the silver bullet and it's certainly not the right starting point for every school as he put it if chairs are being thrown this is not the right step in your journey but what really struck me most was his definition i like that definition the little voice inside your head that's guiding your planning and your evaluation that is so much more than a lot of the academic jargon we often come across his framework with the six pillars also give something super concrete and i really liked his practical strategies that planning grid with three simple columns that's a super smart way to make the invisible a bit more visible in the classroom and i really like the reminder that we're already medical cognitive experts as educators we can't do our job without planning without monitoring without evaluating what we do but the key is making these processes visible and explicit for our students when they're ready for it if you're a leader considering where medical admission fits in your journey i'd really encourage you to assess where you're at first and definitely reach out to Nathan you can find out more about his work and resources at his website i'll make sure those links are in the show notes education leaders is hosted by me Shane Leaning thanks to the show editor Pete McGill and for the original music by Guillermo Silva and thank you so so much for tuning in today if we don't speak before i'll see you here next week if you want to learn more about the brilliant work from the International Curriculum Association head to internationalcurriculum.com