So where are learners exposed to “thinking about thinking”? One place is through stories. Whether we are reading a comic, a story or a novel, or watching a good play or movie, sooner or later the characters think out loud about their thinking. Perhaps the most famous example is Hamlet: “To be, or not to be. That is the question.” While the Kusasa developers have no Shakespearean pretensions, they recognise that disadvantaged learners have limited exposure to literature and therefore limited exposure to metacognition.
The Kusasa characters show in their thought bubbles a pattern that moves back and forth between two kinds of thinking: thinking about a problem; and then thinking about the thinking they are applying to that problem. In this way, learners can not only read and appreciate this pattern of thinking, but see it as a visual back-and-forth, an internal dialogue with practical, problem-solving benefits.