Chapter 9: The Social Mediation of Metacognition

I came to a teaching career relatively late in life, at age 28. Prior to teaching high school science I had many jobs. These included insurance clerk, customs officer, sporting goods salesperson, professional sports coach, and semi-professional musician. Engaging in such a range of occupations, if nothing else taught me the value of effective learning. While at university my interest in learning theory and practice and the concept of metacognition was further fueled through contact with people like John Edwards, then at James Cook University, and Dick White at Monash University who were passionate about its study. Such people fired a strong desire in me to teach students how to learn as well as what to learn. Consequently, as a teacher I was always interested in my students’ learning, how they learnt, and how to improve their learning. However, much to my surprise this interest was not shared by many staff and students in the schools I taught at. Indeed, the response to my suggestions that students’ learning processes and metacognition could and should be improved as an important goal of schooling often met with significant uncertainty and resistance from both groups. This resistance was evident even among some students and teachers who acknowledged the potential value of initiating classroom and curriculum change to improve students’ learning strategies and metacognition. I asked myself, “Why was this? What might be the source/s of such uncertainty and resistance?” Surely, if such ideas could improve students’ learning then they would be embraced. I thought this should be the case because predictions that enormous premiums would be placed on people’s learning efficiency in times of information expansion and social change (e.g., Toffler, 1970) seemed to be being realized. This chapter is an exploration of sociocultural influences of such student resistance and uncertainty. In particular I suggest that students’ socially situated and influenced conceptions of teaching and learning, elements of their metacognitive knowledge, substantially influence students’ willingness to engage in changing their learning processes and enhancing their metacognition.