The relationship of metacognitive knowledge, skills and beliefs in children with and without mathematics learning disabilities

Psychological research from different theoretical approaches have stressed the important role played by metacognitive abilities on learning processes, that is the strong relationship between learning and its conscious use, between assimilating information and acquiring it in a flexible and conscious way, between learning and learning how to learn. The vast panorama of hypotheses and models regards metacognitive processes involved not only in literature but in mathematics learning too. Dealing with marhematical domain, a lot of researches have confirmed that metacognition influences specific tasks in different ways. In the first part of this chapter, the most important studies presented in psychological literature about metacognition in mathematical learning are described. The second one is about the training used to improve mathematics skills and problem solving abilities. The last part highlights in particular the Italian situation.