Perhaps this review of what psychologists called "Theory of Mind" might help answer your question:

https://www.ida.liu.se/~729A15/mtrl/Flavell_ToM.pdf

Best wishes,

Damian

Thanks Vishnu....a lot to learn!

Damian, I'll check the reference.  Thank you.

I would also strongly suggest taking a look at some of the educational psychology behind the development of motivation in learning. A great place to start is with the following couple of articles.

Thanks Michael,  i'll put those on my reading list.

Damien,  I ck's your link.  Good one. I am familiar with Flavell's work, and he had a reference to language and theory of mind which I'm very interested in.

I would be careful with this research literature as there is bias within the field. I believe the debate is confounded by the way that children's perspectives are researched and therefore conclusions about when metacognition appears. For example I think we use too many language based tools (questionnaires and surveys) to work with (young) children and therefore find that metacognition, particularly metacognitive skilfulness, appears later than it actually does. Good research that confounds this link includes Whitebread et al. I have also included one of my own articles which uses visual methods to explore student perspectives of their learning. We have a systematic review of researching metacognition out for review at the moment and so will post that when it is available. 

Kate,  Thank you so much for your answer and links.  I will check them out.  My training is in developmental psychology, so I am a advocate on naturalistic observations as an important tool.  And after watching my own children and 6 grandchildren very closely I agree that some aspects of "meta" cognition appear early, as young as 3 or 4.

Kate, Skimmed both articles.  Loved them, especially the examples in your article.  I'd like to find a way to post excerpts on my "want to learn" blog that addresses metacognitive topics.

Kate Wall journal links on Metacognition

I think I can just copy the links you posted on Research Gate if that is ok.

Whitebread et al. 2009.pdf

Wall et al. 2012 - analysis of PVTs.pdf

Here’s my latest blog post

http://wanttolearn.edublogs.org/category/worth-learning-purpose-outcome/

Fran

looking from the perspective of social cognition development, during the first five years, the children already know about their own learning though it is clearly shows to others  starting  2 years old when the children having interaction among friends like choosing things that they like and familiar with .As we know there's a lot about  learning itself that still unanswered especially in an infant and children. But looking at the newborns that can know their mum voice,  they might ...

May be articles  by Astington JW can give you some ideas..

Thank you Tarzimah, I

ll check the reference.

Hi Fran,

I am glad you found the articles interesting and useful. Of course you can use them in your blog. From a quick scan through you might be interested in the work I have done on Learning to Learn - articles and reports can be downloaded from my page on ResearchGate. We ran a 10 year project working in partnership with teachers in primary, secondary, vocational and HE settings to explore the development of metacognition, effective learning dispositions and powerful pedagogies for making the process of learning explicit. The project includes over 200 case studies written by teachers about exploring learning in their classrooms.

I hope it will have good links with your own writing - I see huge cross overs and am very excited about the match. Let me know if you want to know more.

K

Michael,  I finally got to your references.  Thank you!  I found the last one on attribution training particularly helpful; great set of recommendations. I especially appreciate the focus on children who struggle, one of my passions.   I am somewhat familiar with attribution theory, although most of my work has focused on the cognitive dimensions of metacognition.

Again, thank you.  I appreciate that your links were so easy to access and download.

Kate, Thank you so much for the resources on your web site.  I am very excited to learn about the CfL and the focus on learning to learn.  I like the generation concept and am especially interested in the Fourth generation (involvement of students in the process).  I have a long standing belief that we can teach children to learn about and take more control of their learning.  In the early 90's I wrote a text on Learning and Individual Differences that used a Piagetian framework to help teachers identify where (why) learning was breaking down for K-12 students.  In my fantasy, we would teach students to identify those same 7 domains and point them out to the teacher, if necessary.  So, for example, a child might say, "Could you represent that information if a different way" or "I can't remember all of the ideas, could you slow down or repeat what you said." 

Unfortunately I did that work before it could easily  be stored online.  Given some new interest in learning to learn, I may go back and update the model.

I will continue to look at the work you have on line.  I was able to download a few documents, but not others.  Thank you.

Hi Fran,

I am glad it looks of interest. Just let me know which ones are being problematic and i will send them to you directly. Also let me know what you think of what we did (and learned) - I am always interested in how the work is received.

Kate

Hi Fran, 

We found that at age 4 even before entering school, children already hold sophisticated beliefs related to learning and express value on learning, and articulate social and intellectual benefits of learning  (But such perceptions differ depending on culture and SES). Check "Why attend schoo?" article posted on my researchgate website. Hope it will help!

Yoko,  I read the article abstract and am very interested.  I have requested the full copy.

I will share a recent interaction my not quite 4year old grandson had with his grandfather. He was in his office and noticed a barometer and asked what it was.  His grandfather gave him the name and then Luc asked, "Does it turn colors?"  His grandfather than "began" explaining the workings of a barometer.  Just a few words into the explanation, Luc said, "Wait a minute..." as though his grandfather was going too fast.  Luc also asks a lot of "what does....(word )mean?"  After spending a great deal of time in preschool and kindergarten (as a developmental psychologist, volunteer,researcher and grandparent), I'm convinced that young children know a great deal about the Idea of learning and are very interested in it.  I think Kate Wall's work on "the language of learning" gives us wonderful opportunities to understand the developmental progression of metacognition. I am particularly interested in children's use of "meta" words (think, confused, "teached", figure out, "just kidding", Imagine, summarize).  I refer back to David Perkins' work on the language of thinking quite often.  I hope we will share our knowledge with teachers so that they can nurture that development.

Hi Fran -

As a developmentalist myself, I am very interested in this topic too.  Carol Dweck is probably the biggest and most influential pioneer in attribution research.  Building on that work, Ellen Skinner did some wonderful work in perceived control and action theory, and has continued on in collaboration with Melanie Zimmer-Gembeck to explore the regulatory mechanisms that govern the development of internal processes that are requisite for learning and other self-system resources to emerge.  Having a foundational understanding of those inner workings has been incredibly useful to me in exploring interventions to increase motivation to learn and remain engaged with learning contexts.  I have many of these articles in my own collection and can share if you find citations you're interested in.  Feel free to contact me anytime.

Teresa,  Thank you.  I am somewhat familiar with Dweck's work and will check out Zimmer-Gamteck.  I will try to track down some of the references.

Hi Fran,

Just catching up on the conversations. I am interested in the idea of meta-words and emergent metacognition. I have a PhD student (co-supervised with Steve Higgins), Louise Gascoine, who is exploring the development of metacognition across children in compulsory school years (in England) using a systematic sample of data collected with pupil views templates. She is showing through mixed method analysis how the frequency of key words changes as children get older, but also how context in which they are used influences the interpretation of metacognitive awareness. If you would like me to put you in touch with Louise directly then email me: [email protected]

Kate

Kate,  Thanks so much for the connection.  I will follow up with email.  I am very interested in what I have called "meta" verbs, verbs that reflect the mental actions that students are asked to take to complete a task:  categorize, infer, synthesize, etc.  Several years ago I created a "meta" vocabulary list based upon the then current standards being used in our state of Vermont.

Fran

Does anyone know of other research where teachers are explicitly trying to teach children to use metacognitive "language" or acknowledging such language when children use it spontaneously?