Metacognition in the music classroom

With the Education Endowment Foundation's (EEF) toolbox naming ‘metacognition and self-regulation’ as the number one strategy for improving student attainment, and the relatively low-cost, high-impact effect it can have, metacognition has become the buzzword in many schools. With training often focused on the more written based subjects, a consideration of what it looks like in the music classroom, and how much it is already used, can be useful – particularly when highlighting the great work going on in your department.

In the EEF's guidance report on the subject they say that ‘most teachers support metacognition without realising it’, and this is never more so the case than in the music classroom. Metacognition fits easily with musicality – what we do as musicians, and train our students to emulate, is entirely based on metacognition.