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Vygotsky as Precursor to Metacognitive Theory: III. Recent Metacognitive Research within a Vygotskian Framework Ivar Bråten a a Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, Norway Online Publication Date: 01 January 1992

To cite this Article Bråten, Ivar(1992)'Vygotsky as Precursor to Metacognitive Theory: III. Recent Metacognitive Research within a

Vygotskian Framework',Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research,36:1,3 — 19 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/0031383920360101 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0031383920360101

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Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 36, No. 1, 1992

Vygotsky as Precursor to Metacognitive Theory: III. Recent Metacognitive Research within a Vygotskian Framework Downloaded By: [University of Oslo Library] At: 11:50 9 December 2008

IVAR BRÅTEN Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1092, Blindern, N-0317 Oslo 3, Norway

This article reviews some recent metacognitive projects inspired by Vygotskian theory. These include research on children's memory development, on the mother-child dyad, and on the origin and function of adaptive inner speech. Two examples of instructional research with problem learners are given as well. In a final section, concluding the series of three articles to which this one belongs, it is suggested that among the metacognitive issues still moot, the problems of task variables, the relationship between metacognition and motivation, and the transsituational character of metacognition, may profitably be researched within a Vygotskian perspective.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION In the first article of this series (Bråten, 1991a), the concept of metacognition was briefly discussed, and the four historical roots of metacognition mentioned by Brown (1987) were summarized. In the second article (Bråten, 1991b), it was demonstrated that topics discussed in contemporary metacognitive research are integral parts of Vygotsky's (1978, 1986) theory of cognitive development, and the uniqueness of a Vygotskian approach to metacognition was specified. As Rohrkemper (1989) has pointed out, much current research informs constructs posited by Vygotsky. She has thus noted relevant research within the different perspectives of developmental, clinical, and educational psychology. This third article will focus both basic and applied research that, of late years, have taken Vygotsky's (1978, 1986) theory of cognitive development as a starting point. Clearly, there is not space available to give but a few examples of psychological research inspired by Vygotsky in this context. Moreover, only examples with a distinct metacognitive stamp will be included. This series of articles will be concluded with a section discussing some metacognitive issues still open for future research in the context of Vygotsky's theory.

4 Ivar Bråten SOME METACOGNITIVELY ORIENTED RESEARCH PROJECTS INSPIRED BY VYGOTSKY

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Memory Development Research As a first example of recent metacognitive research within a Vygotskian framework, one would like to draw the reader's attention to work carried out by Paris and his collaborators on children's memory development (Paris et al., 1985). These authors have chosen to focus on the higher aspects of children's remembering that can be controlled and directed to serve functions such as learning and problem-solving, at the expense of elementary (basic) memory processes reflecting largely maturational changes. Guided by Vygotsky's (1978) principles of internalized cognitive processes, they have analyzed how children learn to remember strategically and effectively in the everyday situations of home and school. In accordance with Vygotsky's theory, children are assumed to remember deliberately and flexibly, to "employ cognitive signs and tools to accomplish mnemonic purposes", through repeated social guidance (Paris et al., 1985, p. 86). This includes both informal interactions between adults and children and more explicit tutoring and instruction in social contexts. First, research on children's memory skills in the home has been examined. Paris et al. (1985) have thus illustrated how interactions between parents and children may contain specific instructions for using mnemonic strategies, intentionality, task meaning, and motivation. In daily dialogues, then, parents more or less explicitly transmit memory information to their children. This transmission may also be characterized by a 'scaffolded' situation, signifying that the expert (parent) creates a structure ('scaffold') in which the novice (child) can extend current skills and knowledge to reach higher levels of expertise. Paris et al. (1985) have illustrated how such scaffolding may also include open-ended questions, non-verbal instructions, greater involvement of the child, and more time spent reviewing. On the basis of research findings, moreover, they have established that adults should be sensitive to the specific needs of the child so that scaffolding can be added and removed as needed during social interactions, thereby providing a smooth transition from otherregulation to self-regulation. Paris et al. (1985) have summarized their review of relevant research in this way: Thus, within familiar contexts that provide interest and personal significance to children, social interactions involving a variety of different 'players' facilitate the development of deliberate remembering. We have provided evidence that interactions between parents and children promote self-regulated remembering. Research on child-child cognitive interactions is just beginning (e.g. Doise & Mugny, 1979) but promises to inform us further about the socialization of memory skills, (p. 98) Compared with their rather detailed analysis of the influence of the home and parents on children's learning and remembering, Paris et al. (1985) have devoted a relatively small part of their discussion to the influence of schools and teachers. They have noted, however, how schooling familiarizes children with tasks demand-


Metacognitive Research 5 ing deliberate learning and memory. In school, children are also introduced to cognitive strategies that help them adapt to the demands of these tasks. While some strategies may not be taught directly in some schools, many of these skills are modelled directly for students and encouraged through instruction and feedback. Moreover, schooling and educational experiences may provide children "an understanding about the general need for intentional actions as well as the differential utility of various cognitive stategies" (Paris et al., p. 100). Paris et al. (1985) have further attempted to conceptualize what children learn about remembering from their repeated social interactions in home and school as three general principles, termed agency, purpose, and instrumentality, respectively. The first of these principles, agency, concerns the understanding that memory is not always easy, automatic, or accidental; considerable effort on part of the individual is sometimes needed. According to Paris et al. (1985), agency includes three critical dimensions: 'intentionality', 'responsibility', and 'criticism'. Their second principle, purpose, implies that children develop an understanding of different goals of remembering. As regards the principle of instrumentality, this points to an understanding of different cognitive strategies, including their effectiveness, effort, and payoff. While 'utility' refers to the child's understanding of the relative effectiveness of different strategies, 'instrumental economy' refers to his cost-benefit information about different strategies. In Paris et al.'s (1985) opinion, if a child is not convinced of the utility and economy of a cognitive strategy, it is unlikely that he will produce this strategy spontaneously. In sum, Paris et al. (1985) have argued convincingly that children learn about the principles of agency, purpose, and instrumentality from repeated interactions from socially guided remembering. Moreover, these principles are thought to include essential aspects of metacognitive knowledge, facilitating "generalization, transfer, and self-regulation" (p. 108). From this brief and simplified account of Paris et al.'s brilliant analysis of children's memory development, I pass on to three observational studies of preschool children interacting with their mothers in (more or less) naturalistic settings. All of these studies have taken Vygotsky's notion of the zone of proximal development as their starting point, and have tried to show how metacognitive competence is learned within this zone. Research on the Mother-Child Dyad The most frequently cited evidence for the claim that adults take on less cognitive 'workload' as children's competence increases, that is, for the notion of a transition from other-regulation to self-regulation, may well be Wertsch's (1979; Wertsch et al., 1980) descriptions of the mother-child dyad as a problem-solving system. In the Wertsch et al. (1980) study, 18 mother-child dyads were studied while making a puzzle in accordance with a model puzzle which depicted a truck. On the basis of the child's age, these dyads were divided into three groups of six dyads each, referred to as the 2\-, "b\-, and 4\-year-old groups, respectively. The mother was told to help her child whenever she thought he or she needed assistance.

6 Ivar Bråten


Wertsch et al. (1980) reported that the mothers of the youngest children were more likely, verbally and/or non-verbally, to direct the child's attention to the model puzzle than were the mothers of the older children. It was also demonstrated that the mothers of the youngest children took more responsibility for the child's extraction of relevant information from the model puzzle, and for his or her subsequent use of this information in making appropriate decisions. As the data indicated that the mothers decreased their level of control and intervention as the children's age or problem-solving competence increased, Wertsch et al. (1980) concluded that this study "supported] the notion of an ontogenetic transition from other-regulation to self-regulation" (p. 1221). Their discussion closed: Whatever the final status of notions such as 'metacognition' and 'strategic activity' turns out to be, our point here is that cognitive processes often do not appear for the first time after the child has already begun to function as an independent agent. Rather, adult-child interaction is often structured such that the processes are carried out on what Vygotsky called the interpsychological plane before they appear on the intrapsychological plane. Taking the social origins of cognitive processes into account may be one of the most important steps to developing a more complete understanding of their history and final form. (p. 1221) In Moss' (1990) project the verbal exchanges between mothers and their threeto four-year-old children were observed and recorded during a joint block play situation. (Subjects were given a set of blocks and asked to construct something together.) All instances of metacognitive modelling used by the mothers and the self-regulatory verbal expressions of the children were noted. More specifically, for both mother and child, all statements and questions referring to the four metacognitive activities identified by Brown & DeLoache (1978) were coded. These include predicting, monitoring, testing, and checking. Moss' (1990) sample included 15 gifted children (Stanford-Binet IQ scores greater than 130) and 15 preschoolers of average intellectual ability (IQ's between 100 and 120). In brief, Moss' (1990) results indicated that mothers of gifted children were significantly more likely to model metacognitive strategies than mothers of the nongifted group. Likewise, gifted preschoolers were significantly higher in overall verbal use of metacognitive strategies. In both groups of children, metacognitive strategies were primarily produced following maternal statements or questions at a similar level. However, mothers of gifted children were far more likely to initiate such sequences of metacognitive exchanges (i.e. to give metacognitive prompts) than were mothers of the non-gifted group. This indicates that gifted preschoolers' metacognitive expression is still dependent on the other-regulation of the adult (Moss, 1990). On the basis of these results, Moss (1990) has suggested that differences observed between gifted and average-ability schoolchildren in the independent use of metacognitive activities, in part, may be rooted in social interactions during the preschool period. She has also suggested that parents of gifted children themselves


Metacognitive Research 7 may be encouraged to focus interactions on a metacognitive level by their children's task performance and advanced verbal competence. As part of a longitudinal project proceeding at the Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, Olaussen (1990) has studied 42 six-year-old-children interacting with their mothers in a semi-structured book-reading situation. (In Norway, compulsory education starts when the child is seven years old.) The following types of interactions are presented in her preliminary report: (1) interactions stimulating awareness of one's own knowledge; (2) interactions stimulating a decontextualized use of language; and (3) interactions stimulating knowledge of written symbols. According to Olaussen (1990), reading disabled children may seem to lack precisely the strategies furthered by such interactions. She has thus attached great importance to the fact that each of these strategies is used by mothers reading aloud to their children, nicely illustrated in her work by transcripts of interactional sequences. This, suggests Olaussen (1990), may well explain the common observation that children much read to during the preschool period seldom have any difficulties learning to read and spell. Partaking in book-reading games of a dialogical character, these children may gradually transfer literacy-relevant strategies from the inter- to the intrapsychological plane of functioning. It would probably be an exaggeration to state that observational studies of the kind referred to here have proved that adult-child cooperation within the zone of proximal development, also termed scaffolded instruction, is essential for the acquisition of metacognitive competence. Nor have the superiority of scaffolded instruction over other methods of instruction been directly demonstrated through such studies (Day et al., 1989). To resolve these issues, according to Day et al. (1989), observational research should be supplemented with experimental research involving instructional manipulations. I will return to instructional research later on.

Research on the Origin and Function of Adaptive Inner Speech Rohrkemper (1989) has described a research programme attending to reported inner speech as a function of task difficulty, type of social/instructional environment, and individual differences among learners. This research programme can be considered an elaboration of a Vygotskian view of self-regulated learning and academic achievement, also incorporating insights from attribution theory, information-processing theory, social-learning theory, and socialization research (Rohrkemper, 1989). According to Rohrkemper (1989), two types of inner speech may be identified: self-involved inner speech and task-involved inner speech. They are defined in the following way: Self-involved inner speech reflects control over the self through enhancing motivational and affective statements. Task-involved inner speech reflects control over the task through problem solving, strategic instructional statements afforded by the task, and modification of the task if necessary and possible, (p. 154)


8

Ivar Bråten

Together, these two types of inner speech enable the individual to function effectively and independently during learning and problem-solving. Moreover, they integrate the affective and the intellectual aspects of learning and problem-solving. As regards individual differences in these affective and intellectual strategies for coping with different tasks, Rohrkemper (1989) has sought their origin in multiple social/instructional environments interacting with the individual. Eventually, internalization of socialization influences of home and school results in unique learner constructions and reconstructions of self-direction (Rohrkemper, 1989). Concerning the sources of self-involved and task-involved inner speech, respectively, Rohrkemper (1989) has further hypothesized that self-involved inner speech may be reflecting multiple influences from home, school, and peers, whereas task-involved inner speech may be more specifically tied to school learning. Finally, she has asserted that individuals must be given tasks that engage and stimulate their selfdirective inner speech, as well as contribute to the integration of its affective and intellectual aspects. Tasks that are challenging in the sense that they require striving and informative in the sense that they allow students to learn about themselves as learners, are thus held to provide good opportunities for further development of functional inner speech (Rohrkemper, 1989). Rohrkemper (1989) has illustrated her theoretical framework by means of a detailed case study. This includes descriptions of a 12-year-old girl's social/instructional environments of home and school and analyses of her reported inner speech while actually engaged in mathematical problem-solving. It was demonstrated that the girl's self-involved inner speech was embedded in the interpersonal influences of her home, and that her task-involved inner speech was in accordance with the learning experiences afforded by the school. This was only true, however, when the girl was confronting moderately difficult problems. In contrast, when she was confronting relatively easy or highly difficult problems, her reported inner speech was neither particularly homelike nor particularly school-like. Furthermore, only moderately difficult tasks seemed to afford integration of affective and intellectual verbal strategies, embedded as they were in different parts of her social/instructional universe. Briefly stated, Rohrkemper's (1989) work has emphasized that to fully understand self-regulated academic learning, internalization of social/instructional environments of home and school must be considered. The self-directive inner speech developed through this process of internalization, must, however, be engaged by tasks of a challenging and informative character. More specifically, Rohrkemper (1989) has suggested that only moderately difficult tasks will facilitate the continued development and refinement, and therefore power, of task-involved inner speech. Such tasks may also engage self-involved inner speech that promotes the kind of self-knowledge that enhances coping with stressful tasks (Rohrkemper, 1989). Intervention Research The preceding illustrations of metacognitively oriented research inspired by Vygotsky, have all drawn attention to the repeated social interactions that may be


Metacognitive Research 9 considered catalysts for children's development of metacognitive knowledge and control. Indeed, studies such as these have focused dimensions of development that may seem critical for a better understanding of training and remediation of learning and problem-solving within different domains. If practical and educational objectives are to be attained, however, developmental descriptions have to be supplemented with theories that specify how to improve metacognition and, hence, learning and problem-solving (cf. Paris et ai, 1985). As suggested by several contemporary researchers (e.g. Davydov & Zinchenko, 1989; John-Steiner & Souberman, 1978; Rohrkemper, 1989; Tulviste, 1989), models of training and remediation may profitably be anchored within a Vygotskian perspective as well. Asserting that Vygotsky's theory continues to have tremendous importance for educational practice, Davydov & Zinchenko (1989), for example, have ascertained that "it can be used to construct and design education and upbringing that focus principally on the development of different types of activity that will enable children to reproduce the corresponding socially evolved needs and aptitudes" (p. 34). It is a fact, moreover, that intervention research has been an important part of the metacognitive field of inquiry for approximately 15 years (cf. Brown et al., 1983; Campione, 1987). According to Campione (1987), attempts to incorporate theory and data from the metacognitive domain into instructional packages may be classified in two dimensions: "the kind of metacognitive supplement involved (knowledge or regulation); and the presence or absence of additional specific skills training" (p. 126). This classification implies, then, that each metacognitive component could be taught either independently (as an object in itself) or in conjunction with a specific cognitive strategy (Campione, 1987). This section will be concluded with two examples of intervention research that draw heavily on metacognitive theory and, at the same time, are built around central Vygotskian notions. The first of these has focused the task domain of reading comprehension, the second spelling. Palincsar & Brown (1984, 1986) have termed their procedure for teaching reading comprehension 'reciprocal teaching'. The hallmark of this training procedure is its interactive nature: "There is ongoing interplay among the teacher and students as they work toward the goal of understanding the text" (Palincsar & Brown, 1986, pp. 773-774). While the teacher temporarily supports each student in the acquisition and mastery of certain comprehension-fostering strategies, the student is challenged to use these strategies independently as he displays increased competence with comprehension (Palincsar & Brown, 1986). Thus, first experienced in social contexts, strategies are supposed to become individualized and internalized by the student in the course of training. Palincsar & Brown (1984, 1986) have termed the four strategies elaborated during reciprocal teaching summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. Each of these strategies is thought to promote both comprehension of text and comprehension monitoring. The way they may enter into an interactive learning game, engaging the teacher and his students in a dialogue concerning each segment of text, will be briefly illustrated in the following. After the teacher and the student have both read a text segment, the dialogue leader may try to paraphrase the main idea(s) and integrate the information


10 Ivar Bråten presented in the text. Following such summary statements, he tries to formulate some questions that may be anticipated from this passage, and then engages in selftesting. Questions meant for the other may be generated as well. The dialogue leader may also try to clarify any ambiguities in the text, for example, concerning unfamiliar vocabulary or complicated concepts. Lastly, he may further hypotheses as to what the author will discuss in the remaining segments of the text (cf. Palincsar & Brown, 1984, 1986). In the next segment, the roles are switched, that is, the dialogue leader is now assuming a less responsible role. Of course, the students may initially have some difficulties assuming the role of dialogue leader when their turn comes. The training may begin with the teacher explaining "what strategies the students will be learning, why they are learning these particular activities, in what situations such strategies will be helpful, and how they will go about learning the strategies (i.e. turn taking as teacher)" (Palincsar & Brown, 1986, p. 773). (Students should be continually explained why these strategies are useful, given feedback concerning their effectiveness, and encouraged to use them whenever studying texts.) The students are also briefly introduced to each of the four strategies before the dialogue begins. During the initial sessions of reciprocal teaching, the teacher will lead the dialogue, thereby modelling the comprehension-fostering activities. Then, responsibility for taking his turn as dialogue leader is transferred to the student. This transference of control is gradually and mutually agreed on. Evaluating the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching in a study of seventh graders with severe comprehension problems (but adequate decoding skills), Palincsar & Brown (1984) could demonstrate that, with repeated interactive experiences, these students became able to produce the instructed strategies independently during the interactive sessions. Moreover, large improvements were revealed on direct measures of comprehension after independent reading, both in the laboratory and in the classroom. Generalization probes administered in the social studies and science classes these students attended indicated that they were able to apply independently the newly acquired skills in these settings. Finally, the experimental students improved their ability to write summaries of and questions about text, as well as detect inconsistencies in text (Palincsar & Brown, 1984). In the above mentioned study, one teacher and one student formed interactive tutoring dyads. However, reciprocal teaching has also been implemented effectively in groups of poor comprehenders of varying size, including groups where relatively well-functioning students have been trained to assume the role of the adult teacher (cf. Palincsar & Brown, 1986). The training procedure developed by Palincsar & Brown illustrates how one may create appropriate conditions for students performing various types of joint activity. However, not only did the students learn to perform effective cognitive strategies in interaction with their adult teachers. Gradual transference of responsibility for sustaining the dialogue to the students, seemed to ensure that they internalized these strategies as part of their repertoire of self-regulatory activities as well. Brown et al. (1983) have stated that the strategies taught in Palincsar & Brown's project were "intermediate-level" in relation to task-specific cognitive


Metacognitive Research 11 strategies on the one hand, and transsituational metacognitive (self-regulatory) skills on the other. They were thus described as "more general than the extremely specific routines investigated in much of the literature and taught in many school settings, but, at the same time, more powerful than the self-regulatory skills that have attracted so much recent interest" (Brown et al, p. 141). Concerned with the remediation of spelling retardation, Bråten has chosen a somewhat different approach in his attempt to go beyond the teaching of taskspecific cognitive strategies. During the last ten years, he has been developing a training package primarily aimed at students who have great difficulties in spelling irregular words, whereas their mastery of regular words spelled in accordance with the most simple phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules is quite adequate (cf. Bråten, 1981, 1984a, b, 1990). Based on a thorough theoretical analysis of the spelling domain, cognitive strategies for coping effectively with irregular words have been specified. On a word-specific level, these involve students in verbalizing the problematic (irregular) feature of each word, whenever possible pronouncing the irregular word in accordance with its written form. Such secondary phonological (phonographemic) codes, contrasting the normal pronunciation of the words, are held to be the most effective mechanism for mediating and regulating correct spelling (cf. Bråten, 1990). This strategy has been taught explicitly, using an elaboration of Meichenbaum's (1977) self-instructional training paradigm. This implies that it has been actively modelled by the adult and gradually transferred to the intrapersonal plane of functioning. Moreover, the process of internalization has been stimulated directly through systematic fading procedures. The self-instructional training in itself engages the adult and the child in a dialogical interaction that provides the opportunity to learn metacognitive (selfregulatory) activities such as planning, monitoring, testing, checking, and evaluating in conjunction with the task-specific cognitive strategy instructed. Moreover, Bråten (1990) has recommended that his phase of self-instructional training is preceded by a phase in which the two aspects of the spelling task (referring to the regularity/ irregularity dichotomy), the child's capacities and limitations as regards spelling, and the need for strategic effort are discussed. During this introductory phase the adult is also leading a kind of Socratic dialogue concerning a number of possible strategies for coping with the child's limitations (i.e. for mastering irregular words). The strategy to be instructed is thus 'chosen' by the child, following a set of leading questions asked by the adult. After the child has been explained how he is going to learn this strategy, criteria for training success are finally agreed on. During the training period, the child is continually monitoring his own progress, as well as the spelling errors still produced. Moreover, he is regularly given feedback concerning the utility and economy of the chosen strategy, and reminded of the goal of training. As regards the child's knowledge about the spelling task, this is gradually refined and differentiated to map the different categories of irregular words existing in the orthographic system (cf. Bråten, 1990). This kind of knowledge is transmitted to the child in the context of his transition from the use of a word-specific strategy to strategies directed towards groups of irregular words. In Bråten's (1990) training programme, verbalizations of the latter kind are not


12 Ivar Bråten introduced until the child has learnt a number of irregular words individually with the help of the word-specific strategy described above. In brief, Bråten's (1990) training programme for remediating spelling retardation may be seen as incorporating specific cognitive strategies for operating within the domain of spelling, knowledge about this domain, and relatively task-independent self-regulatory activities. Presumably, poor spellers experience problems in all these areas. So far, the effectiveness of the complex training package designed by Bråten has been evaluated in a series of single case studies, yielding rather impressive results. Working with fourth-grade (approximately 10-year-old) children with severe spelling retardation as regards irregular words, both maintenance and generalization of training effects, as well as clear clinical or social significance of training outcome, have been demonstrated. Training has been carried out over long periods of time, however, indicating that spelling remediation is a long-term process which may need to span many months or even years (cf. Bråten, 1981, 1984a, b, 1990). While instructional research with problem learners as described above may seem to support the claim that metacognitive competence is a consequence of reciprocal interactions in an instructional setting, the assumption that such scaffolding is superior to other methods of instruction still needs backing from experimental research evaluating the relative effectiveness of different teaching strategies. As yet, there are no clear data to support generalizations about the one best method, and the best method for teaching metacognition may eventually be found to vary with students, teachers, and/or tasks (cf. Day et al, 1989). Summary This review of research has illustrated how Vygotsky's theory, of late, has been applied to understanding the impact of social interaction on metacognitive development during the preschool period. So far, there are strong indications that dyadic interaction, structured by adults, provides the social guidance that awakens and arouses to life budding metacognitive processes. Learnt within the zone of proximal development, such processes are probably at the heart of what is transferred from the inter- to the intrapsychological plane of functioning. Hence, individual differences in metacognitive competence and academic achievement which are apparent by school age, may appear to be consolidated through social exchanges which mediate and organize the child's learning and problem-solving before school start. In relation to Vygotsky's original theory (cf. Bråten, 1991b), it may seem justified to argue that recent research has attached greater importance to social interaction taking place before and outside the formal context of school instruction. This does not mean, however, that contemporary researchers in the field have overlooked the special status conferred to school instruction within Vygotsky's theory (see Wertsch & Youniss, 1987). Rather, both informal interactions between adults and children in the home, and more formal instruction in the school, are today held to be important determinants of the higher aspects of cognitive functioning (i.e. metacognition).

Metacognitive Research 13


It has also been illustrated that schoolchildren who are retarded in both metacognition and academic achievement, may profit by approaches that try to apply both Vygotskian notions and metacognitive theory to the topic of instruction. Such approaches have intended to give poor learners interactive learning experiences that mimic real life learning. Moreover, they have embedded the instruction of task-specific cognitive strategies in a broader metacognitive approach, aimed at fostering both learning and learning-to-learn. Finally, the examples included in this section may be said to support Vygotsky's (1978, 1986) theory of the critical role of language in the formation of advanced cognitive functions. This applies to the developmental analyses and the training studies alike. GENERAL CONCLUSION As Zimmerman (1989) has pointed out, this is an era in which student selfregulation may seem alarmingly absent. This implies that theories that can offer direction as well as insight into the processes of self-regulated learning and problem-solving may be of particular merit. Metacognitive theory has certainly proved to be a valuable tool in this respect. It should be clear from this series of articles, however, that the direction and insight offered by metacognitive theory, to a certain extent may be seen as rediscoveries of some basic tenets of Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development. Brown (1987) has concluded that among the really interesting issues of learning and development that metacognitive theory has forced one to reconsider as central concerns are: "conscious control over learning; learning without awareness; transfer of rule learning; relation of age and expertise to various aspects of planning; monitoring and error correcting; general rules for problem solving versus domain specific knowledge; and mechanisms of change" (p. 107). As the rather extensive discussion of Vygotsky's developmental theory in these papers has shown (see especially, Bråten, 1991b), reconsider may indeed seem to be the right word. Add to this that: One of the liberations of current theories of cognitive science is that researchers admit that human beings are intentional, and that an adequate explanation of human behavior necessitates reference to the intention, or the meaning of the behavior to the individual who performs it; that is, the individual's understanding of what he or she is doing. (Brown, 1987, p. 82) There can be no doubt that such ideas already had their liberty in Vygotsky's work (cf. Bråten, 1991b). Another rediscovery made by contemporary metacognitive research, not mentioned earlier in these articles, concerns the need to do microgenetic analyses, that is, to address the transition from (meta)cognitive incompetence to competence directly by observing learning actually taking place within a subject over time. As a matter of fact, many studies of metacognition have involved microgenetic analyses of children learning self-regulation by doing of their own. This is exactly the


14 Ivar Bråten methodological approach recommended by Vygotsky (1978). Moreover, metacognitive research has involved several studies of children learning self-regulation through the intervention of others (cf. Brown, 1987; Brown et al, 1983). Reversion to the microgenetic approach advocated by Vygotsky (1978) is also apparent in the research examples reviewed in the present paper. Thus, recent metacognitive research inspired by Vygotsky reveals great interest in within-subject mechanisms of change that can be observed in a single subject over time. One would like to put forward the prediction that this trend toward longitudinal, microgenetic case studies will grow even stronger in the years to come. It would be alien to Vygotskian thinking to regard his theory as a dogma in which one could find the answers to all questions of contemporary psychology. Indeed, Vygotsky himself repudiated the 'quotation method' in dealing with psychological problems (cf. Davydov & Zinchenko, 1989). Of course, this is not inconsistent with the view that researchers interested in metacognition ought to find it clarifying to study his general method of psychological inquiry, as well as his substantial contributions to psychological science. How his theory may enlighten researchers in the field of metacognition, has been the main topic of these papers. However, the remainder of this section will be devoted to some metacognitive issues still moot. Despite the direction and impetus recently given to metacognitive research by a Vygotskian perspective, these issues are but a few of the many problems still in need of thoughtful consideration and serious empirical study. Among the problems that should be studied more intensively in the future, one would like to mention: the idiosyncratic nature of metacognitive processes versus their shared use within a particular culture, the specific factor(s) responsible for positive effects when complex metacognitive training packages are implemented, task variables, the relationship between metacognition and motivation, and the transsituational character of metacognition. From this somewhat random list, the three last-mentioned are discussed here. The first of these issues concerns task variables. As was mentioned in the discussion of Vygotsky's theory (Bråten, 1991b), Vygotsky (1986) himself held that self-regulatory (egocentric) speech was stimulated by difficult and frustrating tasks. Moreover, his concept of the zone of proximal development implies that tasks that learners can do only under social guidance, will mediate independent problemsolving in the most effective way. To the same effect, Rohrkemper (1989) has concluded that too easy tasks do not mediate verbal self-regulation. She has added, however, that nor do too difficult tasks, leaving moderately difficult tasks as the most facilitating condition for the development of self-directive speech (Rohrkemper, 1989). No doubt, there is still plenty of room for increased clarity concerning this issue. Might it not be the case, for example, that some tasks are better suited to enhance verbal self-regulation than others, regardless of task difficulty? And what are the consequences then of constantly confronting students with tasks where verbal processing actually impairs their learning and problem-solving? Indeed, Schooler & Engstler-Schooler (1990) have quite recently provided some evidence that this may be true of some visually presented tasks.


Metacognitive Research 15 Other questions that should be asked concern the meaning of too easy tasks. These may well include both tasks that do not require effortful cognition and tasks where the individual has already internalized his verbal self-regulation to the point of automatization. The latter tasks may indicate, then, that conscious self-regulation may be useful only during initial learning and trouble-shooting. Over time, it should profitably be replaced by automatic skills that accomplish the same functions (cf. Paris et al., 1985). Longitudinal research is required, however, to further clarify this temporal locus of metacognition within skill development. Moreover, far too little is known about the consequences of repeatedly asking students to verbalize understanding long gone underground. That this is certainly not an unusual procedure in school should be well known. One could also ask for more research on the long-term effects of confronting students with too difficult tasks, repeatedly exposing them to uncontrollable failure. Finally, the concept of moderately difficult tasks itself has to be further elaborated of course. Hence, more knowledge about task variables and their influence on students' development of metacognitive competence may be needed before educators can design optimal tasks for use in the regular classroom as well as for special educational purposes. A second topic where present knowledge is certainly insufficient concerns the relationship between metacognition and motivation. To Vygotsky (1986), it seemed obvious that the interrelation between the cognitive and the motivational aspects of mind had to be examined. He wrote: "[Unit analysis] demonstrates the existence of a dynamic system of meaning in which the affective and the intellectual unite". And: "It further permits us to trace the path from a person's needs and impulses to the specific direction taken by his thoughts, and the reverse path from his thoughts to his behavior and activity" (Vygotsky, 1986, pp. 10-11). It is a fact that many contemporary researchers in the field of psychology have come to the same conclusion as Vygotsky, that cognitive and motivational factors are interacting in complex ways (cf. Haugen, 1989). So far, this general tendency has culminated in Haugen's (1989) bold attempt to encompass both these aspects of goal-oriented activity in a unitary model, also spelling out the differences between the two closely intertwined concepts of cognition and motivation. In the present paper, Rohrkemper's (1989) work has illustrated how contemporary Vygotskian scholars have elaborated his notion of a dialectical integration of the cognitive and the motivational. Thus, her postulation of two types of inner speech, task-involved and self-involved, reflects a concern with the integration of the cognitive and the motivational aspects of self-regulation (Rohrkemper, 1989). Moreover, directly pertaining to the relationship between metacognition and motivation, Weinert (1987) has pointed out that variables considered within the research domains of metacognition and motivation tend to overlap. There may be good reason to expect, then, that attempts to establish connections between research efforts in these areas can lead to a set of interesting new questions that may guide integrated research programmes. In this context, one must be content to draw the reader's attention to the German theorist, Julius Kuhl (1987), who has presented a


16 Ivar Bråten model of processes intervening between motivation and performance. According to Kuhl (1987), these processes may be of two kinds, action-oriented and stateoriented, both occurring on a metacognitive, a cognitive, and an emotional/affective level. While action-oriented processes facilitate goal-accomplishment, state-oriented processes are held to decrease the probability that the individual performs the intended action (Kuhl, 1987). (As regards the latter, Kuhl may seem to have in mind something like an adverse edition of Rohrkemper's self-involved process.) Without entering into details concerning Kuhl's (1987) model, it should be pointed out that it allows of certain metacognitive factors that actually impede goal-directed action. This, of course, may have important implications for applied purposes. Moreover, one would like to see this aspect of his theory used to explain the observation that actual self-regulation may be less stable than metacognitive knowledge (cf. Bråten, 1991a). Finally, Kuhl (1987) has suggested that repeated exposure to uncontrollable failure on a task, may impair subsequent task performance because of an increase in state-oriented metacognition. This may also seem to link his model to the issue of task-difficulty, discussed above. A third issue that still needs to be addressed more carefully in future research, concerns the transsituational character of metacognition. In the second paper of this series (Bråten, 1991b), Vygotsky's theory was interpreted as support for the notion that metacognitive competence may be generalized across situations. There seems to be nothing in his theory, however, to support Campione's (1987) assumption that transsituationality should be differentially assigned to the knowledge and control component of metacognition. According to Gavelek & Raphael (1985), there has been a growing recognition among many cognitive psychologists of the contextual nature of thought and action. They write: "We seem to have arrived at a relativity theory of cognition; that is, one which recognizes that how we think is to some extent tied to that which we are thinking about and the context within which all of this occurs" (pp. 104-105). At the same time, metacognition has been launched as a concept that may rescue us from extreme cognitive contextualism. However, as a concession to the contextualist position, some researchers have stated that, to a certain extent, even metacognitive competence is bounded to specific contexts (cf. Gavelek & Raphael, 1985). As opposed to this, Borkowski & Turner (1990) have presented a model that gives emphasis to the transsituational characteristics of metacognition. Their model of metacognition thus includes two central components giving metacognition transsituational applicability. According to Borkowski & Turner (1990), one of these components, termed 'general strategy knowledge', concerns an individual's understanding of the general utility of being strategic. This component is believed to be associated with motivational factors, especially with attributional beliefs about the importance of effort in producing successful performance. The other component in Borkowski & Turner's (1990) model that is believed to be responsible for the transsituational character of metacognition is termed 'metacognitive acquisition processes'. Essentially, this component corresponds to processes termed metacognitive control or self-regulation in these papers (see especially, Bråten, 1991a). In view of Vygotsky's theory, it is interesting to note that the model presented by


Metacognitive Research 17 Borkowski & Turner (1990) holds that aspects of metacognitive knowledge, as well as metacognitive control, are essential for successful learning and problem-solving across situations or domains. In the last resort, this matter is, of course, an empirical one. Although Borkowski & Turner (1990) have reviewed a number of studies that seem to substantiate their model of metacognition, data pertaining to the transsituational character of metacognition are still sparse. Not least does this apply to the question of how metacognitive components interact to promote generalized success on cognitive tasks. It should be mentioned in this context, however, that Kluwe (1990), on the basis of his own empirical studies, has suggested that stateable knowledge about the cognitive demands of different problem-solving conditions may be a precondition for more general and domain-independent self-regulation, that is, "for the conscious selection of procedures and its flexible application across a wide range of tasks" (p. 71). As Kluwe (1990) himself has acknowledged, this assumption needs backing from further studies. To my mind, the issues of task variables, metacognition and motivation, and the transsituational applicability of metacognition, should be issues of central concern for future research on metacognition. My feeling is, moreover, that it will prove fruitful to research these issues within a Vygotskian perspective. Considering the growing recognition that learning, problem-solving, and remembering are not something that happens to students, it is something that happens by students (Zimmerman, 1989), I shall also venture to predict that metacognition will remain in the foreground of cognitive psychology regardless of terminology. Although it has been suggested lately that the influence of metacognition may be waning (cf. Strube, 1990), I thus tend to agree with Brown (1987), that the theoretical ideas and the phenomena subsumed under this term will continue to play a major role in the study of cognition. In these three papers, I have tried to emphasize the continuity of research in this field by referring to some precursory features of Vygotsky's theory. Certainly, contemporary metacognitive researchers should make no apology for seeking guidance for future research in this part of their scientific past. REFERENCES BORKOWSKI, J.G. & TURNER, L.A. (1990) Transsituational characteristics of metacognition, in: W. SCHNEIDER & F. E. WEINERT (Eds) Interactions Among Aptitudes, Strategies, and Knowledge in Cognitive Performance (New York, Springer-Verlag). BROWN, A. (1987) Metacognition, executive control, self-regulation, and other more mysterious mechanisms, in: F. E. WEINERT & R. H. KLUWE (Eds) Metacognition, Motivation, and Understanding (Hillsdale, NJ, Erlbaum). BROWN, A.L., BRANSFORD, J.D., FERRARA, R.A. & CAMPIONE, J.C. (1983) Learning, remembering, and

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