Metacognitive Teaching in a Special Education Class.

A metacognitive teaching approach was implemented in a special education class with five children, aged 12 to 13 years. One day per week, the regular school activities were enriched with a metacognitive intervention with curriculum-unrelated tasks during the morning hours and curriculum-related tasks during the afternoon. The children first worked in dyads, after which the tasks were discussed in the whole class. The discussions served indirectly to teach cognitive and metacognitive strategies and to develop metacognitive awareness in an indirect manner. In the afternoon, the learned strategies were applied to the curriculum related task to foster transfer. In addition, a strategy of the day was defined in the final discussion of both types of exercises, and children were encouraged to use these on other school days. The application of the strategies and the children's metacognitive knowledge were evaluated through self-report questionnaires (both general and task specific), observation of their behavior and verbalizations, and their performance in the various tasks. Children progressed in cognitive and metacognitive strategy use in both types of tasks as well as in their overall performance on the tasks, but their evaluations in the general metacognitive questionnaire decreased. The latter was interpreted as a metacognitive adjustment in the children, who, after repeated reflection on their behavior in different types of tasks, were better able to evaluate their cognitive and metacognitive behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]