A metacognitive approach to improving academic performance and study skills in sixth form students

Many students find the transition to A-level study challenging. In our most recent cohort of chemistry students, those with low prior attainment made less progress than their peers. Observing the underperforming students offers two reasons for this: 1) poor study habits in terms of the type of activities undertaken as independent work, and 2) overestimating their understanding by judging it based on a specific context rather than the ability to transfer it to a different situation. Metacognition has been identified as having the potential to close the gap between students with low prior attainment and their peers, as well as being recommended by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (Quigley et al., 2018) to improve study habits. The EEF report also identified two aspects of planning, activate relevant prior knowledge about the task and select appropriate strategies. These are similar to the process required for transfer of knowledge (Georghiades, 2000), which suggests that metacogn