Metacognitive learning environments: an approach to metacognition research

Abstract

There is a long history of research on learning environments and their impact on student outcomes. This is often traced back to ideas circulating in the 1930s around the interaction between individual characteristics and the surrounding environment and the determining effects of this on individual behaviour (Lewin, 1936; Murray, 1938) as Fraser has documented (Fraser, 2012). However, the growth in research into learning environments is most marked during the 1990s and the birth of a journal specific to the field (Learning Environments Research, Springer, 1998). During the twentieth century learning environments research developed from a focus on external factors and what the environment looked like from the outside, to a greater focus on teacher and student perceptions of their learning environment and the extent to which the environment fits with their own needs, values and beliefs. In this chapter I begin with an outline of what is known about the effect of the learning environment on various student and teacher outcomes before arguing for metacognition research to consider taking a learning environment approach. This chapter considers what is meant by a “metacognitive learning environment” and how this might be constructed.