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The Learning Conversation is a metacognitive pedagogical approach to the development of self-regulatory behavior. There are two identified practices that developed in American and Europe. In America the development of the Learning Conversation grew out of work done at the first college level program for students with specific learning disabilities (SLD), Curry College’s Program for the Advancement of Learning (PAL)in 1970. Dr. Gertrude Webb was responsible for establishing the PAL approach of teaching students with SLD about their strengths and weaknesses and how to apply this knowledge to meet the demands of college and life. This philosophy developed into a practice first identified as the learning conversation by Dr. Dian Goss (Adelizzi & Goss, 1995; Pennini, 2006). This approach to metacognitive education is highly specialized. Professors require doctorates and an extensive background in the neuropsychology of learning and teaching neurologically diverse student populations. These are self-diagnostic metacognitive conversations designed to enable a professor to learn “about her students from them rather than from a report about them” (Pennini, 2006, p. 181) and help the student learn about themselves in a way that promotes educational transformation(Mezirow, 1991) and the development self-authorship(Kegan, 1982).

In the United Kingdom Harris-Augenstein & Thomas (1991), published a book entitled The Learning Conversation, in relation to their theory of self-organized learning (S.O.L.). Harris-Augenstein & Thomas focused on the individual and their internalization of the process, defining the learning conversation as "a form of dialogue about a learning experience in which the learner reflects on some event or activity in the past. Ultimately, it is intended that people will internalize such conversations so that they are able to review the learning experience systematically for themselves, but at the beginning, the learning conversation is carried out with the assistance of a teacher or tutor" (p. 180, cited in Pennini, 2006).