Transsituational Characteristics of Metacognition

Abstract

A consensus has emerged in recent years regarding the development and utilization of learning skills in early and middle childhood: Strategy use is limited by domain boundaries as well as by available knowledge within each domain (cf. Weinert & Kluwe, 1987). A comforting result of this consensus is that the commonplace failure to find strategy transfer—which has plagued the field of cognitive development for two decades (Borkowski & Cavanaugh, 1979; Campione & Brown, 1977)—is much less problematic. That is, the relentless search during the 1970s for the widespread generalization of learning skills is rendered less feasible and, perhaps less interesting, by research and theory on the domain-specificity of strategy use.