ABSTRACT

The term 'cognition' is widely used in teaching and teacher education amid the movement that aims to make educational practices more evidence-based. Attention has always been a major concept in classroom practice and cognitive psychologists use the term in essentially a similar way to its everyday meaning. From a cognition point of view, however, attention has certain key characteristics that can be studied scientifically and which can inform the design of teaching activities. Cognitive load has become a popular concept in education, though it is arguably less well-accepted among cognitive psychologists. Metacognition is a slightly ambiguous term, with some educators using it so broadly that it seems to cover any kind of thinking and processing that takes place during learning. Learners are constantly using their working memory abilities to register and combine information, while monitoring their own progress via a set of processes known as metacognition.