Metacognition Projects

A person at a cafe bench window, holding a notebook, tapping pen to head in thinking gesture. The ability to regulate one’s cognitive processes (metacognition) and emotional processes is vital for successful learning.

Development of cognitive and emotional regulatory skills fluctuates with age and educational demands. The key transition to high school places substantial demands on self-regulation, as students are expected to increasingly self-manage their learning. Critically, this transition coincides with adolescence, which has been identified as a second “window of opportunity” in neurological development. This is an important period of development for higher-level executive functions that allow students to increasingly regulate their own emotions and cognitions.

Furthermore, previous research has reported a ‘dip’ in the academic wellbeing of students during this period that is associated with negative impacts on attitudes to learning, engagement, and academic outcomes. This demonstrates the need to form a greater understanding of both the development of cognitive and emotional self-regulation during adolescence, and of how this development in linked to academic well-being following the transition to high school.

Objectives

To develop an understanding of how students’ ability to regulation their emotions and cognitions develops across early adolescence.
To determine whether cognitive and emotion regulation abilities predict academic well-being in early adolescence.
To create an important evidence-base for understanding the self-regulatory factors that predict academic well-being in Australian early high school students.
To identify targets for future evidence-based pedological interventions.