Through the Glass Clearly: Finally Seeing Metacognition
The other day my grandson pressed his face to the glass, eager to see what was beyond. The picture makes me smile every time, yet it also makes me think. Education has been doing the opposite for far too long. We have been staring at what is inside the frame: test scores, pacing charts, and benchmarks. What we should be looking at is much bigger. It is metacognition, the simple but powerful act of teaching students how to think about their own thinking.
Beyond Memorization
Most schools are good at teaching kids what to know. Students memorize facts, pass quizzes, and move on to the next chapter. What they often miss is the ability to pause and ask, “How did I get to this answer? What worked for me? What do I need to change next time?” That is where growth happens. That is where real learning begins.
What We Built at Elite
When I was CEO at Elite Academic Academy, we put metacognition at the center of our work. Students kept reflection journals where they tracked not just what they learned but how they learned it. Teachers asked questions that encouraged them to stop, notice their strategies, and make adjustments.
As a staff, we lived it too. We spent an entire year in what we called a Question Quest. Together, we practiced the art of asking better questions, not just giving better answers. That shift changed how we taught, how we coached students, and even how we collaborated with one another. It reminded us that curiosity is contagious, and when teachers model reflection and inquiry, students follow.
We also invested in our teachers through Elite X, a professional development program where educators learned to weave reflection into their lessons and measure progress in ways that went beyond grades. That work was transformational; I co-authored a white paper to be released in the weeks ahead.
Even Google is Catching On
Now we see companies, such as Google, announcing new initiatives focused on metacognition. Google’s LearnLM project is designed to help students reflect on their learning, track their progress, and even see reasoning steps unfold.
It is encouraging, but it also raises the question: why did it take this long? My friends and colleagues Anna and Lucy ,from AI Educators, have been saying this for years. Scientists have been publishing research on metacognition for decades. Teachers have been asking for it in classrooms. The reality is that schools should have been making this shift long ago.
How IlluminateXR Brings it to Life
At Illuminate XR (IXR), metacognition is not something we talk about on the side. It is designed into every experience through the Illuminate Learning Loop. Students are guided through cycles of doing, reflecting, evaluating, and applying.
In a virtual reality immersive frog dissection, learners pause to consider how they approached the task before they move on. During an Apollo 11 mission, they stop to analyze which strategies helped them succeed under pressure. In a Zen-inspired space VR space, AI characters are there to help students practice the art of reflecting on how they learn. Everywhere in IXR, students are not just completing assignments. They are learning how to learn, a mission I am so proud to bring to life.
Looking Through the Glass Clearly
My grandson’s face pressed to the glass is more than a funny picture. It is a reminder. Education has spent too long looking inward at narrow measures of success. The future of learning begins when we look through the glass clearly and recognize the real gift we can give students. That gift is not just knowledge, but the ability to see themselves think. When students pause to reflect on how they learn, they do more than grow. They unlock the power to shape their own future.
