Metacognitive strategies and academic success
Metacognitive strategies and academic success

Summary/Abstract: Metacognition is the representation that the student has of the knowledge that he possesses and of the way in which he can construct and use it. One of the best predictors of academic success is precisely the student’s ability to reflect on his knowledge and to understand the reasoning he engages in to use and construct new knowledge. Students must therefore be made aware of the learning strategies they use to learn and understand the world. Metacognition is inseparable from self-knowledge and self-confidence. These are key concepts on which the teacher bases himself to develop the relationship between the student and knowledge. It is through cognitive mediation that the teacher gives the student the means to learn and therefore the keys to his academic success. Metacognitive experiences play a central role in cognitive functioning and self-regulatory abilities. It is by their intermediary that the learner can develop the other two components of metacognition: metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies. However, many students have little opportunity to practice such experiences or, when they have it, psychoaffective aspects inhibit the benefit they could obtain from it (lack of decentration, external causal attribution). The lack of self-confidence generates in the student a feeling of fear of doing things, even if he denies it and takes an attitude of indifference, which mobilizes his mental resources. To be a good student is to learn to be aware of one’s own intelligence, in the sense of knowledge, and of the degree to which one’s own understanding can then reach.

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