Assessing Metacognition: An Overview

Metacognition is a complex construct that has been defined in various ways by different scholars, who have divided it into several components. The most well-known categorization comes from Brown (1987), who divided metacognition into two main aspects: knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. Knowledge of cognition can further be divided into three types: declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge. Regulation of cognition includes control and monitoring processes. The assessment of these components has been a topic of debate among scholars, leading to the development of various inventories, interviews, and surveys designed to evaluate students' use of metacognition during or after learning processes. This article provides a synthesis of the different assessment tools discussed in the literature, focusing on metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive control, and metacognitive monitoring. It concludes with a comprehensive inventory that assesses both knowledge and regulation of cognition. Additionally, the article addresses the reliability and validity of the tools presented, offering guidance for researchers on how to improve the internal validity of their data collection processes and research findings.