Supporting adolescents with attentional difficulties to develop their metacognition skills: an action research project

Metacognitive skills are important for effective learning, with literature suggesting these skills are particularly difficult to acquire for those with a diagnosis of ADHD. This action research project investigated how best to support adolescents with a diagnosis of ADHD to develop their metacognition, specifically around planning, monitoring, and evaluating. It sought to encourage them to self-reflect on independent work completed during English lessons in an intervention session with the researcher. There were four participants from Year 9 (age 13 to 14 years) at a secondary school in the West Midlands and they were in the same English class; three of them had a diagnosis of ADHD. Data was collected from recordings of the intervention sessions, the participants’ self-reflections, questionnaires, and a reflective journal. There were four cycles of action research. Template analysis was performed on this data which produced a thematic map representing the whole data and individual thematic maps for each participant. The main findings were that each participant had an individual profile of metacognitive strengths and needs which included their motivation for changing their behaviour and knowledge of metacognitive strategies. They required an individual approach to support, whether that be the explicit modelling of a strategy or requiring a prompt to use one. The consideration of group dynamics was an important factor for the intervention to work. This action research project offers further discussion of implications and challenges for working with adolescents who have a diagnosis of ADHD or similar needs.