Making Learning Visible: The role of language in the development of metacognition and self-regulation in young children

Within the UK, Higgins et al . ( 2011 ) have carried out a similar exercise on UK-based research and come to very similar conclusions. The four categories of intervention which they found to have an effect size above 0.4 (generally accepted among statisticians as an indicator of a clear and significant effect) are those supporting the quality of teacher feedback, the metacognitive and self-regulatory abilities of students and peer tutoring, together with (and this is no surprise, given the body of other evidence, e.g. Sylva and Wiltshire, 1993 ; Sylva et al ., 2004 ) interventions in the early years of a child’s education.