Promoting metacognition through negotiated assessment

Metacognition is widely considered integral to effective learning. However environments that support metacognition can be difficult to develop. This paper proposes an approach to assessment through student contracts that are designed to both address issues of fairness of assessment as well as promote the planning, monitoring and evaluation integral to enhancing metacognition. By negotiating their assessment in ways that involve feedback that is internal, parallel and external to students, they have the opportunity to develop clearer understandings of themselves as learners and their own learning processes. The model is supported with online technology to help create an easy and confidential manner in which peer feedback can be collated. Initial findings suggest that students perceive themselves to be metacognitive, however, they may not be fully engaged in the processes that underpin this psychological state. It is proposed that online environments that support negotiated assessment expose these processes in ways that may enhance metacognitive outcomes, and lead to further research that identifies the nature of such processes and their value in the assessment approach