Previous Activities 2006

After a successful first meeting in Amsterdam two years ago, David Whitebread and his
team from the School of Education, University of Cambridge, did a great effort in making
this second meeting even more memorable. Indeed, we experienced a heat wave much
like the rest of Europe, but the temperature broke all Cambridgeshire's records. Anyway,
David and his team put together a very interesting program, representing many aspects
of metacognition in various domains. The program included two keynotes (one by
Wolfgang Schneider and another by David Whitebread), five symposia, fifteen paper
sessions, and three structured poster sessions. Plenty to choose from, but sometimes
hard to choose between. Also, the number of participants had increased from 75 in
Amsterdam to over 130 in Cambridge. During the conference it was suggested that a
next SIG meeting should be extended with another day in order to have less conflicting
parallel sessions. This means that the homogeneity of interests amongst participants was
quite remarkable, despite differences in primary orientations. Key issues concerned the
relation between Theory-of-Mind and metacognition, unification in the definitions of
metacognition, assessment issues, and the training of metacognition in various domains.
Also, the new international journal "Metacognition and Learning" was presented there.
For those who want to have a free electronic sample copy, please go to
http://meta.edmgr.com and click on `journal overview'.
On Thursday the conference delegates went punting on the river Cam, enjoying the
marvellous view on the colleges and, even better, enjoying a slight breeze over the river.
Moreover, an excellent conference dinner was organised that evening in the traditional
dining room of Jesus College, one of the oldest colleges. This opportunity of informal
meetings with colleagues was highly valued.
The next biennial meeting of SIG 16 on Metacognition in 2008 will be hosted by the
University of Ioannina in the northwest of Greece. Plousia Misailidi will be organising this
conference in cooperation with Anastasia Efklides.