Purpose
The purpose of this symposium is to bring together research work that is currently being
undertaken with students from a variety of disciplines and levels of study in the UK,
Australia and Finland, aimed at encouraging greater awareness and understanding of
themselves as learners and the requirements of higher education. In doing so we are
opening up our own practice as professional educators to the same thinking that we are applying to students’ learning: a major challenge in a professional field where the norm
is not to talk about one’s own learning!
The contributors to the symposium are all practitioner teachers engaged in the
scholarship and research of teaching and learning in their own disciplinary fields and
institutional contexts. All five papers in the symposium are concerned with the idea of
metalearning which is the focus for this essay.
The symposium provides us (and particularly me in my role as discussant) with
opportunity, reason and motivation to ‘learn about metalearning’. The symposium
research papers provide important insights into the perceptions of students about their
learning and the impacts of teaching and instructional strategies that aim to develop the
habits of metalearning. I have attempted to use my own process for learning about
metalearning as a vehicle for building knowledge about the concept of metalearning. I
am greatly indebted to everyone who has helped me learn (see acknowledgements).
A formative experience
The idea of metalearning is rooted in personal contexts and experiences of learning and
the perecptions and beliefs we grow about learning through our day to day engagements
with it. So I will begin my attempt to understand the concept through a relevant and
recent personal experience.
In July 2003 I was involved in a team-based study visit to the American Association of
Higher Education Summer Academy. The Summer Academy is a team-based
experience for professional and organisational learning. Over five days, institutional
teams engage in discussion and planning interspersed with a programme of activities
