The purpose of this article is to explore the notion of metacognition with a view to clarifying its significance for the development of teaching and learning strategies which enhance pupils' capacities as autonomous learners. It is argued that metacognition is a form of self-knowledge which is not fundamentally different from any other kind of knowledge; and that such knowledge can be interpreted as involving understanding of a wide range of social and psychological processes. Two key questions which relate to the specific context of the school are then discussed: one to do with the relationship between metacognition and school subject knowledge, and the other with the connection between metacognition and the various discourses of school learning. A number of studies of intervention strategies derived from different theoretical and methodological contexts are then briefly reviewed.
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