Tag: Faculty Metacognition

Democratizing a Classroom: The Challenge of Student Engagement and Metacognition

by Dr. Sonya Abbye Taylor, Associate Professor of Education and Chair of Education Division

INTRODUCTION: DEMOCRATIZING A CLASSROOM AND CREATING A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS

 John Dewey in 1917, introduced the concept of student engagement. In creating classroom democracies, “communities … permeated throughout with the spirit of art, history, and science”— environments where students became self-directed, committed to service, and engaged in experiences reflective of society. Dewey believed in relevant curriculum, meaningful to students’ lives—in which students are thoroughly engaged with content, among a community of learners functioning as and in society. I believe that a community of learners relies upon student engagement and metacognition is intrinsically connected to being engaged. Student engagement provides the core of democratic classrooms, with the role of promoting and educating towards diversity, equity, and inclusion.

THE CHALLENGE OF METACOGNITION AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

I prepare teacher candidates to work with diverse populations, including students with special needs. I have rarely had complaints regarding grades. Students could predict grades because they had processed feedback and reflected on their work throughout the semester. Yet, last spring I received a complaint. Considering her grades averaged within the “A” range, a student questioned why she received an “A-.” She questioned if her grade was related to participation for which she received 35/75 points; she was correct. This experience required me to reflect on Dewey’s concepts of engagement in relation to class participation and to reflect on connections between learning and engagement. Aligning Dewey’s concept of “community of learners” with student engagement, I see how metacognition—the student’s and my own—underlies this pedagogical struggle. What was the student’s understanding of engagement and participation? How did her understanding equate with my own?

During this course, held synchronously, online, this student was invisible except for two presentations for which visibility was required. However, when reviewing videos, I found times she responded in chat and discussions: brief responses, one-word comments or a sentence, emanating from a black box on the screen.

My expectations for students in online environments are comparable to in-person classes. Classes include discussions that require sharing ideas, asking questions, analyzing, and deliberating. The 75 points allocated, places value on discussions. If a student is silent throughout a semester, they have not contributed to the community. Yet, this student perceived themselves to have been engaged, to have demonstrated engagement, and therefore eligible for full- credit. 

As I thought about this contradiction the following questions emerged:

What do we learn when we:

  • learn in isolation?
  • interact with individuals within a learning community?
  • delve into content while engaging within a learning community?

Most importantly, what is the relationship between learning, engagement, and learning within the community, in preparing students to be teachers for the democratic society Dewey describes?

For teacher educators and teacher candidates, answers to these questions provide more fodder for thought. We can learn in isolation. We can memorize information alone, anywhere or engage with a text while reading thoughtfully, asking silent questions of the text and author. We can learn sitting silently in a classroom. We CAN learn in isolation, but WHAT do we learn? What opportunities are missed when we function in this manner?

A silent classroom has always been troublesome to me. Student engagement and class participation are synonymous to me. It is joyful to hear students discussing content, actively listening, asking questions, and sharing opinions based on their frame of reference.

  • Isn’t that the vision of democracy Dewey conveys?
  • Don’t these interactions provide practice communicating, and enable students to see another’s point of view, to understand perspectives and experiences of individuals from other cultures?
  • Aren’t these the interactions that enable us to understand and appreciate one another?

Students can learn content without opportunities and expectations for engagement with others. However, in vibrant learning communities, students ask questions and question themselves; they think and rethink concepts because of the various influences. They use metacognitive processes to evolve as learners.

 I changed the student’s grade because she perceived her actions constituted participation. Though the student received an “A,” I did her no favor. Informed by Dewey, I believe the “A” she received was not as valuable as the “B’s,” “A-’s,” or “A’s,” earned by other students who demonstrated engagement. Those students were visible: the expressions on their faces illuminated their thoughts. Posing thoughtful questions and adding to discussions, those students enriched the experience for us all. They responded while they were processing. When their responses were askew, conversation ensued that brought the level of thought and understanding to higher levels. They demonstrated their commitment to learning and being part of a community were more important than having the “right” answer. They earned my respect and my confidence, knowing that their classrooms will be full of engaged learners, that they will encourage their students to think and will engage them in metacognitive practices.

CONCLUSION

I agonized over this grade, and by doing so, I know I served myself and my future students well. I will redouble my efforts to define and explain the value of engagement in relation to “community” and to create more activities, pose more questions and provide collaborative assignments that inspire engagement in efforts to make engagement palpable. I will do a better job of calling attention to student engagement. I will continue to honor askew responses because of the thought processes they illuminate. Metacognition has brought me to these conclusions, and will be the catalyst for changes that I’ll incorporate in my instruction and the emphasis I will place on my students to  be  self-directed.

In processing and metacognitively rethinking ideas for my classes and revisions for this paper, I reflected further on Dewey’s perception of engagement for a community of learners reflective of the society, and have come to this conclusion. We teach classes with diverse students therefore we have the opportunity and obligation to create environments in our classrooms where students can be productive members of the classroom society. We must create environments where students can function efficiently and develop the skills and behaviors desirable in a democratic society. In these environments students are respected and are comfortable to take risks; they listen to each other, communicate effectively, accept each other’s opinions, settle disagreements, celebrate each other’s successes, and support each other through difficult times. By creating these environments in teacher education classrooms perhaps there would be consensus as to the quality and value of engagement.

Works Cited

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. Simon and Brown, 2012


Practical Magic: Using Metacognition to Connect DEI Work and the Writing Center

by Gina Evers, M.F.A., Director of the Writing Center and First-Year Experience Coordinator

Metacognition as Recursion

One of my refrains as a writing teacher is “everything is connected, and it’s your job to figure out how.” Of course, the process of identifying connections between seemingly disparate ideas is a metacognitive one: writers must cultivate an awareness of how they think about a particular concept in order to think about it differently. And through this reconsideration, this intellectual quest to discover parallels, translations, or evolutions among ideas, new meanings are made and beautiful thesis statements are born!

While the process of birthing knowledge from chaos may seem magical, composition scholars have articulated it in many articles defining the writing process as recursive rather than linear. My favorite definition of recursion, because it is both practical and magical, comes from the work of Sondra Perl (1980/2008). In order to write recursively, Perl advises us to engage in three tasks. The first she terms “retrospective structuring,” or a looking back to what a writer has already written while reconciling it with their present thoughts and compositions (p. 145). Perl names the second task “projective structuring,” or a looking forward to predict the responses and questions of readers (p. 146). Again, writers use those anticipations to inform how they compose in the present. And here comes the magic: “felt sense,” a term (Perl attributes to philosopher Eugene Gendlin) and uses to describe a writer’s intuition about what feels right to them (p. 142). Perl argues that engaging in felt sense is crucial for both effective retrospective and projective structuring.

I argue metacognition is at the heart of felt sense; metacognition is the practical key needed to unlock the magic of that writerly intuition. And because that writerly intuition is crucial for recursive writing and thinking, engaging in metacognition is a recursive process while, likewise, writing recursively is inherently metacognitive. These theoretical connections became clear to me throughout my Writing Center work in the Spring 2022 semester, when I focused my tutor training program on anti-racist tutoring practices.

Connecting the Writing Center to DEI Work: A Beginning

To open our first staff meeting that focused on anti-racist tutoring, I asked my undergraduate writing tutors to compose and share a six-word memoir describing the first time they became aware of race. Here is mine:

  • I wanted braids; Mom said no.

And here are two from my team:

  • Middle school history class.
  • No one else looked like me.

The first and third memoir show personal confrontations with difference, while the second shows a more removed interaction, where difference is explained in an academic setting. This diversity is relevant as we consider how we think about our roles as educators with a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Each student brings with them distinct personal and academic histories of race and racism, and those histories take up space in our classrooms — even if we do not see or acknowledge them.

Examining this writing activity through the lens of a recursive metacognition / a metacognitive recursion, we see that in the present moment of the staff meeting, tutors were asked to look back to their earliest memories of learning race (retrospective structuring). For me as the educator, learning about the background knowledge of my students allowed me to look forward and tailor the forthcoming activities and lessons to the needs of my specific audience (projective structuring). The felt sense – what I argue is actually recursive metacognition / metacognitive recursion – then emerged through our sharing and discussion. In conversation, we reconciled those early learnings of race with what we know now.

Seeing the Metacognitive Recursion in my Own Process

The six-word memoir activity came from “Talking Justice: The Role of Antiracism in the Writing Center” (2019) – a piece of scholarship authored by peer writing consultants at Oklahoma State University. In it, the authors describe the six-word memoir as a part of the anti-racist training they created for writing center staff at OSU. The authors articulate three goals of their training:

  1. Cultivate a “willingness to be disturbed,” to disrupt our own individual ways of thinking and being that have continued systemic racism, which demands “a tireless investment in reflection, openness, and hope for a better, more fulfilling future for us all” (Diab et al. 20).
  2. Create (brave) spaces where people are able to discuss issues and concerns surrounding race and racism with a willingness to be wrong, to call out with compassion, and to seek mutual understanding.
  3. Enact mindful inclusion practices that support diverse writers and resist the writing center’s historical role in gatekeeping and assimilating for academic institutions. (Coenen et al., 2019, p. 14)

Looking Back

These goals – then and now – strike me as particularly metacognitive. The intentional awareness that engaging in anti-racist training will cause disturbance demonstrates a tutor’s willingness to take risks in their thinking and learning. Similarly, creating space for conversation within this plane of disturbance and “mindfully … resist[ing] the writing center’s historical role [of] assimilating” students into the academy both demonstrate contemplation about the ways of knowing we have all participated in.     

Looking Forward

In order to honor Coenen et al’s goals in my own tutor training, I concluded my first staff meeting that focused on anti-racist tutoring by asking tutors to anonymously contribute to a staff Padlet. On it, they described ways a writing center – any writing center – could participate in, support, or condone racism. After doing this work, my tutors then contributed to a working document that listed ways our Mount Saint Mary College Writing Center could combat racism and resist complicity with racism.

Recursive Metacognition and Anti-racist Tutor Training

But what of Perl’s magical ingredient? Where does felt sense – recursive metacognition – appear in my facilitation of this first anti-racist tutor training? I knew my tutors needed a structure, so I adapted the six-word memoir activity. I knew my tutors needed to feel empowered with agency to create change, so I chose an article authored by their contemporaries: other peer tutors. I knew my tutors needed to understand how a writing center could contribute to institutional racism without blaming or shaming their tutoring practices, so I created an anonymous Padlet as a forum for this conversation. I knew my tutors needed to be included in creating solutions to correcting racial injustice on campus, so I allowed them to generate a list of action steps we could take as a Writing Center and helped us achieve them.

This knowing I am describing is more than an intuition, a “felt sense”: it is metacognitive awareness I have cultivated as an educator. And put into recursive practice, metacognition becomes a mighty pedagogical tool that can unlock thinking and writing processes for students and educators alike.

References

Coenen, H., Folarin, F., Tinsley, N., & Wright, L. (2019). Talking justice: The role of antiracism in the writing center. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 16(2), 12-19.

Perl, S. (2008). Understanding composing. In T. R. Johnson (Ed.), Teaching Composition: Background Readings (pp.140-148). Bedford/St. Martin’s. (Reprinted from “Understanding composing,” 1980, College Composition and Communication, 31[4], 363-369, https://doi.org/10.2307/356586).


The Deliberate Educator and Metacognition: Is there a fit?

by Dr. Kim A. Hosler, Director of Instructional Design, United States Air Force Academy

What struck me…

A few days ago, a colleague and I were talking about what it means to be a deliberate educator. As I was thinking about what that meant, it struck me that to be a deliberate and purposeful educator, one must also be metacognitive about what they are doing and why. Can we say being a deliberate educator is also being a metacognitive educator? This notion gave me pause.Flow chart diagram listing 3 elements of the metacognitive instructor (reflective, deliberate, self-regulates)

At times we may have a tendency to teach the way we were taught, or in a way that feels right to us. It is possible that an approach that is comfortable for us could lead to effective instruction, but shouldn’t a deliberate educator’s approach to teaching be questioned and explored? Deliberate instructors take time to choose materials, plan course content and learning activities, to respond thoughtfully to learners, all done with intentionality.

Teaching deliberately means that as instructors we are thoughtful, purposeful, and studied about what we do in our classes. It means we put a sustained effort into improving our performance and enriching the learning experiences of our students. According to the McRel Organization (2017), “Being intentional means that teachers know and understand why they are doing what they are doing in the classroom to coach their students to deeper understanding and knowledge.”

Trede and McEwan (2016) talked about a pedagogy of deliberateness, stating that “beyond praxis, the pedagogy of deliberateness is also about knowing when to and when not to act and to challenge existing ways of doing, saying, relating and knowing” (p. 22). They further explained that a “deliberate professional has to be a thinker and a doer, where the thinking informs the doing and the doing informs the thinking. In that sense, the doing is as much a source for learning as the knowing and thinking” (p. 7). This claim speaks directly to critical elements of metacognition, such as awareness, reflection, cognitive monitoring and improvement. Metacognition is generally summarized as control of one’s cognitive skills, which involves planning, monitoring, and evaluating and then modifying one’s approach as needed to ensure student learning.

Where does metacognition fit in? Answer: Everywhere.

Being intentional and purposeful about my course design and teaching presents only part of the picture. Without thoughtful reflection, are we truly being deliberate and metacognitive? Schaefer (2019) reminded us that a metacognitive instructor “asks why they are proceeding in a particular manner” and then uses that reflective awareness to guide final decisions and actions. This supports the notion that being deliberate necessitates asking reflective, self-regulating questions regarding what we are being deliberate about. Specific questions might include:

  • Have I thought through the purpose of the learning activity(ies) I have students completing?
  • Can I explain the why of this activity to them?
  • Have I taken time to reflect on and note what went well with the learning activity and what I could have done better?
  • Have I considered why I am giving students a quiz over the material rather than a short essay? What are the consequences if I don’t give them a quiz or essay?
  • In my XYZ lesson, did I relate that content to previous lessons clearly?
  • What points of confusion did I observe during class? Why do I think some learners became confused?
  • What did I do to make this lesson engaging and interesting? Was it effective?

While I am deliberate and purposeful in my teaching and course design, I find I skimp on the reflection part and avoid asking myself the hard questions. Why, I wonder, am I not taking time to reflect? Do I think I intuitively “get it” and that “it” is correct or the best way? Do I think that being a deliberate educator is enough (no reflection necessary)? Additionally, when I more closely consider what metacognition means, I realize I am missing the self-regulation component, the intentional changes I may need to make after the lesson or course. Reflecting and noting my observations and ideas coupled with deliberate action to improve (self-regulating) will result in my becoming a more effective metacognitive instructor.

Meaningful reflection involves the conscious consideration of one’s beliefs and actions for the purposes of learning and improvement. To reflect, I need to slow down, tolerate the messiness and ambiguity reflection may bring, along with feelings of discomfort, vulnerability, and defensiveness. Without reflection, how do I know what to improve and what needs to be changed to better support student learning?

icon image of woman's head within a mirror frame, with a lightbulb at the top of her head, indicating thinking

To help me get started, Porter (2017) offered the following about reflecting.

  • Identify important questions and self a reflection process that works for you. Is that talking to others or writing in a journal?
  • Set aside time to reflect and stick to it. If you avoid that time, ask yourself why
  • Be still with your thoughts
  • Consider multiple perspectives
  • Start small, set aside 10-minute blocks of time to reflect, especially after an event or class while ideas and observations are fresh

A deliberate educator considers teaching as a purposeful act that can benefit from reflection, analysis, an intentional approach and action. When we are deliberate in our teaching, we know where we are going, how to get there, and the why behind what we are doing. This deliberate process involves taking time for reflection; reflection in planning, for asking the hard questions, and for monitoring our instructional practice. The monitoring of our instructional practice and resulting changes as realized through reflection, moves one from being a deliberate instructor to becoming a metacognitive instructor. Thus, being a deliberate educator is part of being a metacognitive instructor; however, as Scharff (2015) noted, metacognitive instructors also need to make intentional changes based on their reflections and situational awareness.

Please excuse me now, as I want to reflect on what I’ve just written and perhaps make intentional changes.

References

McRel Organization (2017). Intentional teaching inspires intentional learning. Retrieved from https://www.mcrel.org/intentional-teaching-inspires-intentional-learning.

Porter, J. (2017) Why you should make time for self-reflection (even if you hate doing it). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2017/03/why-you-should-make-time-for-self-reflection-even-if-you-hate-doing-it

Scharff, L. (2015). What Do We Mean by “Metacognitive Instruction”? Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/what-do-we-mean-by-metacognitive-instruction/

Schaffer, A. (2019) Metacognitive instruction: Suggestions for faculty. Improve with Metacognition. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/metacognitive-instruction-suggestions/

Trede, F., & McEwen, C. (2016). Educating the deliberate professional: Preparing for future practice (Vol. 17). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32958-1.


Learning. Design. Analytics. Post 4: Metacognitive Design To Support Metacognitive Learning Within Virtual Learning Environments

By Yianna Vovides, PhD and Marie Selvanadin, MS, MBA, Georgetown University

We see the process of design and development of products as very much a metacognitive awareness process given that designers and developers are engaged in cycles of reflection, planning, monitoring, and evaluation with every prototype produced. This is especially the case when embarking on the development of a virtual learning environment (VLE) because of the fact that the environment itself needs to enable and support engagement toward varied types of learning and meet the needs of both instructors and students. In this blog post we discuss the design and development process of a VLE, a web-based case analysis app developed by the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University. We highlight how the metacognitive design process of planning, monitoring, and evaluation supports a reflective practice that enables metacognitive learning.

Context: Ethical Decision Making for Global Managers (GUX)

The case analysis app was designed to augment case-based teaching and learning techniques by providing multiple ways for students to reflect on their thinking in relation to how they make decisions. In collaboration with a faculty member and program director, we approached the design of the app by contextualizing it within the Ethical Decision Making for Global Managers professional certificate offered via edx. The main goal that the app was designed to support learners in achieving is the following: “how to analyze real-world ethical dilemmas using multiple frameworks, considering many possible choices, and selecting a “best choice” option.” The courses in the certificate program focused on rules- and results-based decision-making processes.

Teaching decision-making, let alone ethical decision-making, is not easily done and doing so online, especially within an open self-paced learning environment, is even more challenging (Sternberg, n. d.).

Sternberg emphasizes that:

“[l]earning how to reason ethically is a dialectical, back-and-forth process. Simply delivering content through lectures and readings are at best supplementary forms of instruction. The primary form of instruction needs to be interactive because students need to present ideas, get feedback on those ideas, and then try out re-formed ideas that themselves will be subject to further modification.”

With this in mind, we knew that we needed to design the app in a way that enabled individuals to engage in a back-and-forth process that could support ethical reasoning. We realized early on that in order to make the interaction within the case analysis app meaningful to individual learners, the app itself needed to provide guidance at both the cognitive and metacognitive levels. Therefore, we needed to consider how the app itself could “speak” to the learner. In other words, what interaction could we design as part of the app to provide feedback to the learners along the way so help them reflect about their decision-making process and how they were using the rules-based and results based ethical reasoning approaches.

Our collaboration with the faculty and program director in relation to this project took place over two years, so we had time to understand and internalize the ethical decision-making framework that was being used in the courses which focused on rules-oriented and results-oriented approaches. For enabling both cognitive and metacognitive interactions within the app, we used the reflective sensemaking model (Vovides and Inman, 2016) to guide our design decisions. Sensemaking as a pedagogical approach to teach ethics has been gaining attention (Brandt and Popejoy, 2020).

The following section breaks down the design of the app in relation to the reflective sensemaking process. It includes screenshots taken from the web-based app itself using a case study being used in the Ethical Decision-Making for Global Managers professional certificate available on edx.

Design: Reflective Sensemaking

  1. The reflective sensemaking process begins by asking a learner to explore a real-world case. The example we show in the screenshots is related to Policing Terrorism.

screen shot of article on policing terrorism with highlights

The learner is encouraged to read the case multiple times. A learner has the option to highlight and/or annotate parts of the case and to determine whether they want their annotations to remain private (visible only to them) or made public (visible to others interacting with the same case).

screen shot of initial decision instructions and question

  1. The learner is then asked a yes/no question about the key issue described in the case study In the Policing Terrorism case study, they are asked whether private high tech companies should develop and enforce their own standards to police terrorism on the internet.

Once the learner selects either yes or no, they are asked to write down the reasoning for their decision.

  1. screen shot of example highlights and annotations along with their categoriesAfter this initial decision, the learner is presented with their own highlights and annotations from their reading of the case and asked to identify how important each highlight and annotation was in contributing to their decision.

 

4. screen shot of instructions for the the decision-making frameworkThen, the learner is shown a summary of where their highlights/annotations fall within the Rules and Results decision-making framework. They are asked to consider the following questions:

    • Which framework are you most aligned with? Perhaps you are closer to the middle.
    • What values and assumptions did you bring to your fact selection and decision?

In addition, the app provides learners the option to see their highlights and annotations in context and explore how the instructor engaged with the same case. This aims to reduce the feeling of anonymity and isolation. We also see it as a way to enable further exploration of the case itself.

screen shot of article on policing terrorism with highlights 2The learner is then asked to consider whether a rules- or results-based framework would lead to a “best choice” decision in the case they read. They are asked to use a slider to represent the degree to which they would prioritize rules- or results-based factors and then to explain their reasoning.

screen shot of ethics framework spectrum instructionBy allowing students to take the time to reflect on their learning and decision making, we believe that they are given the opportunity to think about their own thinking (which in simplistic terms is what metacognition is all about) and giving them an opportunity to reflect on their learning.

  1. screen shot of instructions for the decision step in the processAs a final step in the reflective sensemaking process, learners are asked the same yes/no question and given another opportunity to either keep the same decision or change it. In either case, they are asked to explain their reasoning. The focus in this particular example is related to ethical reasoning; however, the approach could be used for other types of reasoning.

Model: Where Learning Design and Analytics Align

screen shot of the dashboard for the case analysis platform at Georgetown University's Ethical Decision-making for Global Managers Professional Certificate ProgramThis case analysis app presents one model for how learning design and analytics can come together to create a unique experience where reflection of the learning process is prioritized. Reflection is critical in developing metacognitive awareness (Schraw, 1998). We designed the app so that learners can go through multiple cases as they move through the Ethical Decision Making for Global Managers professional certificate program. Once learners complete one case then they continue to have access to it for review purposes in the app’s dashboard (shown here). Encouraging review of one’s completed cases enables learners to become more aware of how they reasoned through that case.

To align the learning design and analytics we began with a conceptual data model which we are still refining (see Sensemaking Process with Identified Variables diagram). We took the reflective sensemaking process and have started mapping the variables that could serve as proxies to better understand how learners are making sense of the case they are engaging with. We considered the number of different actions that a learner takes when reading the case itself. We also take into account whether the learner goes back and reviews the case, and more. This type of mapping of the data to the learning process will enable us to make the learner journey visible to the learner because we will be able to create a visualization of the reflective sensemaking process as they engage with the cases.

diagram of the 5 steps in the decision making process: exploration, identification, processing, judgement, integration

Therefore, our next step is to create the visualization of the sensemaking process for each learner who goes through a case that will be available as part of the learner dashboard in the case analysis app. Given that a learner could go through multiple cases, the visualization would also represent the learner’s sensemaking process across cases and over time. We envision that the dashboard itself could then become an active learning space that would support further metacognitive awareness as it would enable learners to interrogate how they reasoned through multiple cases over time.

Our Reflection so Far in relation to using metacognitive design to support metacognitive learning

Schematic of a spiral illustrating loops of before, during, after
Figure 2. Spiral – Before, during, after Model

To design a learner dashboard as an active learning space requires an adaptive learning design process so that we can account for changes from one iteration to the next as we gain a better understanding of how learners are engaging with the app. Given that adaptive learning design is a process that strategically modifies designs based on emerging learner needs (Bower, 2016), we incorporated from the start of this project reflective pauses to become even more aware of our own iterative approach. We planned what we would do before we developed a prototype, during our prototyping process, and after when conducting formative evaluations. Yes, it has taken two years so far!

The app launched in 2020 and we are currently in the process of collecting learner data from the platform and surveys to help us solidify some of the functionality that would be part of the active learning dashboard. We are also investigating options to introduce social learning opportunities as part of the active learning dashboard to reduce the sense of isolation and anonymity. Want to learn more, contact us!

References

Bower, M. (2016). A Framework for Adaptive Learning Design in a Web-Conferencing Environment. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, (1).

Brandt, L., & Popejoy, L. (2020). Use of sensemaking as a pedagogical approach to teach clinical ethics: an integrative review. International Journal of Ethics Education, 1-15.

Schraw, G. (1998). Promoting general metacognitive awareness. Instructional science, 26(1-2), 113-125.

Sternberg, R. J. (n.d.). Developing ethical reasoning and/or ethical decision making | IDEA. IDEA. Retrieved January 10, 2021, from https://www.ideaedu.org/idea-notes-on-learning/developing-ethical-reasoning-and-or-ethical-decision-making/

Vovides, Y., & Inman, S. (2016). Elusive learning—using learning analytics to support reflective sensemaking of ill-structured ethical problems: A learner-managed dashboard solution. Future Internet, 8(2), 26.


Facilitating Metacognition in the Classroom: Teaching to the Needs of Your Students

by Gina Burkart, EdD, Learning Specialist, Clarke University 

Once instructors understand the strengths and weaknesses of students, they can begin to adapt how they deliver the content of their course in ways that their students will be able to connect with it. This makes self-assessments valuable tools for learning and teaching (Burkart, 2020). Self-Assessments help professors note students’ strengths, weaknesses, and perceptions of self so that they can teach curriculum to the needs of the students. This allows professors to use metacognition in their own teaching, i.e. metacognitive instruction.

Mapping Out a Plan for Teaching and Learning

In my own courses, student assessments guide me in using a chart to map out a plan of how to address students’ needs while teaching the planned curriculum on the syllabus. This allows me to be mindful of my teaching and how it is connecting with students as the semester unfolds. The chart helps me note and monitor my students’ strengths and weaknesses, how these may impact course goals/outcomes and strategies that I will use to help my students adapt to the content demands of the course. See Figure 1 for an example chart.

Likewise, it is also helpful to guide students in using metacognition to create their own learning plans for the semester. Creating learning plans can be an effective activity for the first meeting of the class, while going through the course syllabus.

To facilitate this activity, a professor might hand out the syllabus, give students 5-10 minutes to read through the syllabus, and then have them share responses to the following questions in small groups to more strategically and critically read the syllabus and discuss it with classmates:

  • What prior reading and writing experiences have shaped you as a learner?
  • Based on this course syllabus, what challenges do you anticipate?
  • What strategies and resources will you use to meet these challenges?
  • What are your goals for this course?
  • How can you connect the material of this course with your major?
  • How can we as your learning community support you with your learning and goals? What do you need from us?

The small groups can then be invited to share their responses with the large group and write them on the board. Professors might then take a picture of the board and refer back to it later to use as an informal student assessment to inform teaching.

Finally, students return to small groups to create a more detailed and personalized plan of what they might do in order to find success and meet the outcomes of class. Professors might provide a template of a learning plan that would guide students in going through the syllabus and pulling out key information to create the plan. See Figure 2 for an example student learning plan.

Having these types of activities and discussions at the beginning of a course empowers students, as they realize that they are in charge of their learning. As Biggs and Tang (2011) have recognized, student engagement increases when students feel co-ownership and empowerment in the classroom.

Adaptation for Online Courses

This metacognitive activity can also be adapted in an online course through Voice Thread. Voice Thread allows students to create and upload an interactive, video recording of themselves. I have asked students to respond to the same questions in a 3-5-minute Voice Thread video and to also respond to a classmate’s Voice Thread. Additionally, after completing the Voice Threads, students were required to electronically submit a learning plan based on the syllabus for course credit. Similar to the in-class discussions in the face-to-face class, this activity fosters the metacognitive monitoring process that Flavell (1979) described. As students reflect on the skills necessary for the course outcomes, prior metacognitive knowledge and experiences resurface as goals are set and strategies for achieving the goals are identified and shared. Professors are then also able to monitor the needs of the students and provide feedback related to goals and strategies.

In both instances, students are able to share about their learning in a social setting, which reminds students they are not alone in their learning. This is important because students learn about their own learning and self by reflecting on the learning of others (Mead, 1962/1934; Burkart, 2010).

Assignments and Activities that Continue to Foster Metacognitive Growth throughout the Semester

Professors can continue to foster metacognition throughout the semester by integrating assignments and activities that reinforce reflection on learning, strategies, and goal setting. For example, professors might begin each class period with a 1-minute pre-write where students list main points from the assigned readings, questions they want to discuss in class, and why the material is relevant and important. I often have students do this on an index card, and I collect them and use the cards to guide my teaching during the class. While students are engaged in group work, I quickly go through the cards, award a check, plus, or minus with brief comments (to show I value metacognitive work) and incorporate these into class participation points. Questions that students wanted to discuss in class are then discussed. Sometimes, I pose the questions to the large group for discussion. Other times, I distribute the questions to small groups and assign them to formulate a response for the rest of the class.

Not only does using students’ questions in class show students that they are being listened to, it acknowledges that their questions are valued and their preparatory work outside of class is connected to learning inside the classroom. And, based on their questions and class discussion, I rethink strategies and interventions to help students better access the course materials. As Simmons (2017) noted, this type of participatory pedagogy makes students more aware of their own cognitive processes.

The following is a list of activities that I have used or recommended to faculty to foster student metacognition in the classroom (Burkart, 2019):

  • 1-minute prewrite at the beginning of class
  • Create or model note-taking and reading that facilitates learning
  • Model thinking aloud with problem solving, reading, interpreting
  • Incorporate learning checks
  • Assign post-test or assignment analysis
  • Encourage learning material on all levels of learning by assessing and modeling strategies scholars use: concept mapping, reading journals, study/note journals, portfolios
  • Reward revision, rethinking, growth by awarding points to final products
  • Use wrappers while teaching
  • Encourage or arrange study groups
  • Relate the material to students’ lives and experiences
  • Create and assign course blogs with prompts that encourage reflection and discussion on goals, use of strategies, and challenges and growth with learning course material
  • Create group tests/assessments

While monitoring students’ needs and growth throughout the semester, professors can use this list to use metacognition in their own teaching—establish goals and integrate strategies to impact student learning. In turn, this will guide students in reflecting on their learning and increase engagement. Most importantly it provides practice in metacognition that empowers students to take control of their own learning that will carry over into other classes and their personal lives outside of the classroom.

References

Biggs, J. B., & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for quality learning at the university: What the student does. Maidenhead, UK: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press.

Burkart, G. (2019). Engaging the unengaged in the college classroom. Faculty workshop—by request, Clarke University, Dubuque, IA.

Burkart, G. (2010, Dec). First-Year College Student Beliefs about Writing Embedded in Online Discourse: An Analysis and Its Implications to Literacy Learning. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA.

Burkart, G. (2010, May). An analysis of online discourse and its application to literacy learning, The Journal of Literacy and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.literacyandtechnology.org/uploads/1/3/6/8/136889/jlt_v11_1.pdf#page=64

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Simmons, N. (2017). Participatory Pedagogy: Inviting Student Metacognition. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/developing_student_metacognition_simmons/


Awareness of Fractals Strengthens Metacognition Needed for Enacting Informed Teaching Philosophies

by Dr. Ed Nuhfer, California State Universities (retired)

Since 2002, I’ve written a theme-based column, “Developers’ Diary,” for The National Teaching and Learning Forum (NTLF). The central theme through all of these columns is “educating in fractal patterns.” Additionally, I facilitated week-long retreats from 1993 to 2010, and still run workshops, both of which employ visualization of a fractal generator as an aid to understanding concepts of teaching and learning. The wonderful “LAMP” (Learning Actively Mentoring Program) program at the University of Wyoming, where I serve as a mentor, continues to incorporate this aid in participants’ development of informed teaching philosophies.

In writing involved with our academic professions, perhaps no documents are so much the products of metacognition as our written teaching philosophies. These come from within us, which may account for their being so challenging to write. The information-gathering and evidence-based kinds of education through which we mastered most of our own education rarely gave us much practice for metacognitive self-assessment and deep self-reflection.

When properly used, the value of a teaching philosophy lies in “shaping” and nurturing the continuous growth of its author’s expertise. Rather than just a statement, the document serves to direct the author’s intention to enact the practices espoused in the philosophy. In this column, I seek to infuse readers’ already developed metacognitive capacities with an added dimension of “fractal awareness.”

Fractals: Why “Y” Why?

A fractal form is one that develops through growing from a “seed” called a generator (Fig. 1). Development involves repeatedly connecting additional generators to the growing structure. Thus, the character of the full form depends on the characteristics of the generator. A generator consists of simple Euclidean parts, perhaps the simplest being a straight-line segment. We enlist Figure 1 to clarify how initiators form generators, and fractal forms grow through recursively adding more and more generators.

Four levels of fractal development: initiator, generator, fractal form, complex fractal form

Figure 1. Development of a branching fractal form from a “Y-shaped” generator and its precursor initiator (from Nuhfer, 2007). Fractal shapes are the most common of all natural forms. Plants, mountains, clouds, coastlines, patterns of natural events in time like rainfall and floods, blood vessels, and the neural networks in our brains are examples of natural fractal forms.

The concept of fractal form is more than an abstract visualization that inspires creatively thinking about the process of becoming educated. The neural connections that develop in our brains through learning really are fractal forms. When we learn, we connect and stabilize fractal neural networks, so a good deal of our thinking and behavior almost surely has fractal qualities. We can enhance our understanding of educating and becoming educated by discovering the fractal qualities that these endeavors exhibit. One of the most important to recognize is that healthy final forms grow from robust generators. In practice, we can build a sturdy generator from a “blueprint” established by writing a well-informed teaching philosophy. If we mindfully practice this philosophy, the strengths and omissions of our “generator” grow into the strengths and blind spots that characterize our practice.

The branching fractals that develop in our brains are certainly more complex than the model in Figure 1, but even that simple figure helps us to understand and explain countless aspects of the process of learning and, over time, developing higher level thinking capacities.

The Philosophy as a Fractal Generator for Teaching, Learning, and Thinking

The statement, “Metacognition is thinking about thinking” always triggers the question, “What do we think about?” The fractal generator (Fig. 2) in use by me for about the past two decades tends to trigger six items for consideration in what to “think about” to build an informed philosophy. The meaning of “informed philosophy” extends beyond a document informed by a solid base of research on teaching, learning, and thinking. The term “informed philosophy,” as used here, is a document that reflects the growing understanding of ourselves in concert with our growth in knowledge, skills, and evidence-based practices.

Three components in blue (Fig. 2) are mostly components of skills and knowledge. Development of strengths in these three areas comes mainly (not wholly) from external sources. These include the research provided from the literature and from our network of colleagues who help us to build our content expertise and our awareness of varied pedagogical approaches and assessment practices. These originate primarily from resources from outside self, and we mostly develop our practice by drawing on these contributions.

Illustration of components (thinking, teaching, learning) in the fractal generator for faculty and students (by Ed Nuhfer)

Figure 2. A fractal generator model for higher education begins with an initiator that is affect. No deliberate efforts to teach or learn are devoid of affective qualities. Without affective desire to learn to value any of the six areas, such areas will not develop. Practice will then grow from a stunted generator.

The components in red that we call “internal strengths” (Fig. 2) require understanding that develops primarily from within us. The initiator for our generator (Fig. 2) is the red line segment at the base of the generator, which represents our affective feelings. Strong affective interest and enthusiasm may be our most valuable assets for guiding learning efforts to success. We needed to want to do something such as attend college, major in an area that felt attractive and to continue acting to achieve expertise by persevering to develop. That desire comes from within. When our affective passion and cognitive focus align for learning, we are unlikely to fail.

Finding Our Initiators from Within

In starting to write a teaching philosophy, a valuable awareness occurs when we query ourselves about how we obtained our present affective desires for what we aspire to do. Recalling an influential mentor often reveals from whom, when, and where that initial desire occurred. Recollecting a mentor’s valued qualities often reveals that how a teacher now hopes to be remembered began to form with learning to appreciate the power and validity of a particular mentor’s qualities. These recollections usually carry strong emotional ties, and early ideas that produced our conceptions of what constitutes good teaching can be beneficial if they really fit us. They can also be limiting if we unconsciously attempt to imitate a revered mentor rather than advance to develop the teaching that arises from our unique experiences and values.

Cultivating the habit of regular metacognitive conversations with ourselves allows us to confront a query of great importance: “Is what I am doing in the present truly what I most intended to do?” If not, the revised philosophy serves to direct our efforts back to regain doing what we intended to do. That practice allows us to tap the optimal power of affect by doing what a plan of deep introspection revealed that we most wanted to do in our practice. When a troubling event starts to occur, a valuable first reflection is, “Am I actually practicing my philosophy through how I am engaging with this challenge?” Often, we will find that troublesome events occur from a brief moment of inattention that sidetracks us into doing something other than what we intended to do.

Fractals and Uniqueness

In the neural networks that store the well-developed expertise within our brains, the separate neural components are in communication with one another, and they enlist one another to engage successfully with challenges or unexpected changes. Thus, the six areas of the generator (Fig. 2) that grow through our experience should grow to work simultaneously in active practice. Although I’ve found no contributions to research in faculty development that cannot be addressed from within the components of Figure 2, the fractal model is not one of prescriptive development. It does not lead to producing instructors in cookie-cutter fashion who all think alike and teach alike. Indeed, it cannot.

For the same reason that there are neither two trees nor two rainstorms that are alike, there can be no two brains that wire alike. Small differences between individuals’ generators occur through the unique experiences of each person. As these differences influence the replication through the repeated exercise of one’s practice, they guarantee the development of diversity and uniqueness of every teacher, every student, and thus every teaching moment experienced within a class. An internalized awareness that these will never occur again leads to consciously respecting others and valuing the present moment deeply.

We have seen in this brief entry how becoming aware of the pervasiveness of fractals in the physical world and understanding the role of the generator helps the author appreciate the utility of a written teaching philosophy for illuminating one’s own generator. Through the recursive process of repeated implementation, robust generators significantly strengthen one’s practice through time. In our next blog entry, we will examine metacognition’s specific roles in developing each of the six individual components.

Nuhfer, E. B. (2007). “The ABCs of fractal thinking in higher education.” To Improve the Academy (25) 70-89.


Using Communities of Practice to Support Online Educators in Fostering Student Metacognition in Virtual Classrooms

The second post in the “Working with Faculty to Promote Metacognition” guest series is from educational consultant Valencia Gabay, who writes about establishing communities of practice with faculty at a fully online institution to promote metacognition through the instructors’ own reflections on teaching.

by Valencia Gabay
Educational Consultant, Orlando, Florida
Doctoral Student, Organizational Leadership
Indiana Wesleyan University

In our society, the tides of change force students to be highly motivated, self-directed learners. However, authors Cameron and Quinn (2015) stated, “The implication in education is that we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, to use technologies that have not yet been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet” (p. 9). So, how do we prepare students to flourish in this brave new world? One answer: we inspire them to be intellectually curious and use their metacognitive knowledge.  But, we must first tap into our own metacognitive knowledge to support students in doing the same.

picture showing black and orange question marks on a black table

Metacognition is thinking about how you think and the ability to evaluate one’s use of knowledge in learning and decision-making processes (Halpern, 2015). And, like critical thinking, metacognitive skills can be taught even in a virtual learning environment. Our book, Group Coaching and Mentoring: A Framework for Fostering Organizational Change (Algozzini, Gabay, Voyles, Bessolo, & Batchelor, 2017) presented a unique professional development model in which the community of practice approach helped online instructors integrate metacognitive strategies into their instructional practices.

I use the study described in this book to illustrate how instructors, in collective learning spaces, can generate intellectual curiosity and metacognitive energy that is transferable to the virtual classroom (Algozzini et al., 2017). In this study, a faculty director at a fully online university placed 43 online instructors into six communities of practice, each facilitated by a mentor lead. Using web-based conferencing tools, communities of practice met weekly over approximately nine months to discuss information on metacognition and its value to their professional development. Communities of practice cultivated metacognitive energy in two distinct ways.

Using Self-reflection

First, leads used communities of practice to create moments for self-reflection. Instructors assessed their current teaching styles with their peers and examined ways metacognition could influence job performance. Reflection is paramount to enhancing metacognition, but it is essential to know how to question to prompt reflection. According to organizational psychologist and researcher Dr. Tasha Eurich (2017),

  • Why questions can draw us to our limitations;
  • What questions help us see our potential.
  • Why questions stir up negative emotions;
  • What questions keep us curious.
  • Why questions trap us in our past;
  • What questions help us create a better future. (Eurich, 2017, para. 13)

As such, our community leads used the following lines of questioning to encourage instructors to foster a stronger connection with metacognition.

  • In your own words, how would you define metacognition?
  • What does metacognition mean for you as an instructor?
  • What information from the resources about metacognition resonated with you the most?
  • How can you apply that information in the classroom setting to promote student success?

The reflective questioning sparked a renewed interest in intellectual wellbeing. Instructors saw themselves as learners, became aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and set attainable goals towards self-improvement. 

Creating Metacognitively-based Conversations

Second, instructors learned how to fashion metacognitively-based conversations. Those who question critically tend to be strong critical thinkers, and critical thinkers rely on metacognition to ensure their thinking processes will reach desired learning outcomes (Halpern, 2014). Therefore, the community leads challenged instructors to use open-ended questions to keep discussions robust when engaging with their colleagues in communities of practice meetings.  Additionally, instructors participated in exercises using Bloom’s Taxonomy to develop question stems that produced higher order thinking.

Impact for Online Instructors

In a survey, instructors reported that communities of practice provided a safe place for learning how to question and evaluate one’s skills. After working in communities of practice, instructors became more confident using metacognition to bridge gaps in their work performance (Algozzini et al., 2017). Most importantly, instructors possessed a model for generating intellectual curiosity and metacognition among their students. It started with teaching them the power of reflective questioning. This change in teaching style emerged through the prism of social, teaching, and cognitive presence (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2005).

Instructors increased their social presence and transformed their virtual classrooms into a community where students felt comfortable reflecting on what they learned. (Here is a collection of Tips for Creating Social Presence in Online Classrooms.) Instructors knew that students possess a teaching presence; they learn with and from each other. Therefore, instructors made learning content more relatable. They incorporated popular global or national issues relevant to the class discussion, so students could apply what they learned to real life examples. Finally, instructors strengthened their cognitive presence by using class forums to host metacognitively-based conversations. They challenged student thinking by asking open-ended questions and pushing them to support their claims with facts (Algozzini et al., 2017). As instructors demonstrated these tactics, students did the same among their peers.

Inspiring students to be intellectually curious begins with us recognizing that we as instructors are also learners who need to invest in our intellectual wellbeing to better serve the population we teach. We want students to know how to reflect and question as they develop into the thought leaders and global thinkers of tomorrow.  So, as you prepare your students for this brave new world, consider the following questions: How are you staying intellectually curious? In what ways are you using your metacognitive knowledge to support students to think and to question?

References

Algozzini, L., Gabay,V., Voyles, S., Bessolo, K., & Batchelor, G. (2017). Group coaching and mentoring: A framework for fostering organizational change. Campbell, CA: FastPencil, Inc. 

Cameron, K. S & Quinn, R.E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture. San Francisco, CA:  John Wiley & Son, INC.

Eurich, T. (2017). The right way to be introspective: Yes, there’s a wrong way. Retrieved from https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/

Garrison, D. R., Anderson T., & Archer, W. (2010). The first decade of the community of inquiry framework: A retrospective. Internet and Higher Education, 13(1), 1–2.

Halpern, D. F. (2014). Thought and knowledge, An introduction to critical thinking, (5th ed.). New York, NY: Psychology Press.


Metacognitive Instruction: Suggestions for Faculty

by Audra Schaefer, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Neurobiology & Anatomical Sciences, University of Mississippi Medical Center

Intro: This guest editor miniseries, “The Evolution of Metacognition”, examines metacognition of students at various stages of education (undergraduate, graduate and professional), so is fitting to wrap up this miniseries on the evolution of metacognition with discussion of faculty and metacognitive instruction. As educators we often find ourselves focused on enhancing the metacognition of our students.  Yet, in order for us to continue to improve/develop as teachers it is important for us to apply similar metacognitive approaches to our teaching.  This final post of the series will include my experiences in being a metacognitively aware educator and evidence-based suggestions for educators at any level who are looking to employ metacognition in their teaching. ~ Audra Schaefer, PhD, guest editor

————————————————————————————————

Being a teacher is not simple.  Teaching goes well beyond a content expert delivering information into the minds of students.  Harden and Crosby (2000) describe twelve roles of teachers that can be grouped into the broader roles of information provider, role model, facilitator, examiner, planner and resource developer. Effectively carrying out all of these roles can become a time consuming process, and while our focus is on our students, it’s important for us to step back and reflect on ourselves.  How effectively are we carrying out the various roles we manage in the process of teaching?

This seemingly straightforward question can be complicated to answer. Assessing yourself in the various roles encompassed by teaching may fall to the side when an instructor is unsure how to perform those roles in the first place. Educators in higher education often receive little to no explicit training in effective teaching methods and likely aren’t receiving much experience with learning theories.  So, naturally, instructors end up doing what they experienced as a student or mimicking what their colleagues are doing in class.  While this isn’t inherently problematic, simply doing it because that is what you experienced, or even because it works for someone else, is insufficient reasoning to keep doing it.

A metacognitive instructor asks why they are proceeding in a particular manner. How does this approach help you reach the goals you have for your course? How does it help your students achieve the objectives you’ve set for them? By the time an individual begins teaching at any level they’ve encountered plenty of situations that required them to apply problem-solving skills, be it in daily life or applying the scientific method to research. Why then as educators would we not apply the same concepts to our teaching?

What additional kinds of questions can, and perhaps should, metacognitive instructors be asking themselves?  If we consider that planning, monitoring and evaluating are all core components of metacognitive regulation (Schraw, 2006), these provide logical stages for instructors to reflect.  In my own experience, being reflective in each step is incredibly useful for improving the same session in future semesters, as well as preparing for other similar sessions.  The following are examples of questions I frequently ask myself, and if you’re interested in finding additional questions, Kimberly Tanner (2012) has a well-written article that provides numerous questions for faculty to ask students and to ask themselves in an effort to promote metacognition. 

When planning a course or class session, consider not only what your goals are for that course or session, but how you plan to reach those goals.  What do students already know about the topic for that session and how do you know what they know? 

In the middle of a class session it is useful to keep tabs on the session pace and to be adaptable in the moment to make improvements as you go.  What do I notice about student behavior in a given session and what might be the cause?  After a session, and after a course is completed I also take the time to think about how I want to change things and why I want to change them in the future. A common thread here being the “why”.  Why do I do what I do? Why did the students respond the way they did? Why would I make a particular change?

the word "Why" written using question marks

Finally, I’ve found modeling metacognitive behaviors to be quite useful with my students (Tanner, 2012).  When discussing challenging topics with students I make a deliberate effort to think about what aspects of that topic gave me difficulty when I first learned it, and then I make a point to explain that topic to the students in a way that helped me (or past students) make sense of it. 

For example, in neuroanatomy there are numerous pathways in the brain and spinal cord that become confusing very quickly.  I frequently teach these by creating the same simplified drawings I made as a student to sort out these pathways.  I also encourage students to draw with me in class to engage them during a lecture, and numerous students have commented that they begin drawing on their own while studying, an approach that they had not previously used.

I also make a point to model how to proceed when faced with a limitation in my knowledge. This has become an important goal for me in my teaching because I’ve noticed many students struggle to recognize what they do and do not know, or struggle with how to proceed when they don’t know something. Earlier in this miniseries, Dr. Husmann and Dr. Hoffman each provided examples of undergraduate and medical students struggling with metacognition, demonstrating that these difficulties span multiple educational levels. We can shape our instruction to students of any educational stage to gain a sense of their current skill level(s) and adjust our teaching to help improve those skills.

In class, when I am inevitably asked a question to which I do not have an answer, I own it and don’t make a big deal out of it. I share what I do know and then proceed to either have them help me research the answer, or I follow up with them to be sure that we’ve all learned from it.  Although I haven’t explicitly assessed whether it’s having any effect on students, I am getting little bits of data to suggest there are at least a few students who’ve noticed.  One of my favorites is this comment from a medical student after completing a neuroscience course I taught, “If she has taught me anything (besides a lot of Neuro) is that it is okay to not know the answer, we aren’t always going to know everything and it’s completely okay.” 

As educators, at any level, we serve as role models. If we expect our students to become better at regulating their learning, we should expect the same of ourselves. In the first post of this miniseries Caroline Mueller discussed how as a graduate student she is working to implement metacognitive approaches to both her learning and teaching. Regardless of your experience with teaching, metacognitive instruction can help you continue to improve. Our attitudes and mindset are important for setting the tone for a classroom environment. If we aim to help our students develop their metacognitive skills, we should aim to do so ourselves.

Harden, R.M., & J. Crosby. (2000). AMEE Guide No 20: The good teacher is more than a lecturer – the twelve roles of the teacher. Medical Teacher, 22:4, 334-347.

Schraw, G., Crippen, K.J., & K. Hartley. (2006). Promoting self-regulation in science education: Metacognition as a part of a broader perspective on learning. Research in Science Education, 36, 111-139.

Tanner, K.D. (2012). Promoting Student Metacognition. CBE – Life Sciences Education, 11, 113-120. [https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/promoting-student-metacognition/]


Metacognitive support for HIP student learning communities

by John Draeger, SUNY Buffalo State

In a previous post, I argued that metacognition can support undergraduate research because it encourages students to become aware of the inquiry process and it can help students make meaningful adjustments when things go off the rails (Draeger, 2018). Like undergraduate research, student learning communities are on the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) list of high-impact practices (HIP). They make the list because they require multiple interactions between faculty and students about substantive matters as well as frequent, constructive feedback from faculty, and regular, structured processes for reflection and integration (Kuh 2008; Kilgo, Sheets & Pascarella 2015). In a similar vein, this post argues that instructors and students can benefit from being more metacognitive about their involvement in learning communities. While learning communities can take various forms, they involve groups of students taking a common set of courses at the same time with the same instructors. Learning communities aim to integrate learning experiences across courses in the community.

Sample models of student learning communities

Some models of learning communities involve groups of students taking a collection of courses co-taught by the same instructors. The co-teaching model promotes coordination and communication between instructors about course design, instruction, and assessment. Because students and instructors are present for class sessions in each of the courses, there are plenty of opportunities to make cross-disciplinary observations. Students, for example, can watch as instructors approach a common reading from very different points of view. However, the co-teaching model is often not feasible at many institutions. Another model of learning community requires that a cohort of students take some of the same courses taught by the same instructors, but the courses are not co-taught. Because faculty are rarely in the same room at the same time, I would argue that it is all the more important that they take a metacognitive approach to their student learning community involvement.

Strategies for building metacognition into learning communities

At SUNY Buffalo State, we’ve developed a series of workshops and related materials to promote greater coordination and integration across student learning community courses. The following are just a few of those strategies. (Anyone interested in learning more about resource materials can contact me at draegejd@buffalostate.edu).

First, instructors can review the learning outcomes for each of the courses to look for points of similarity and departure. Points of convergence might be around content (e.g., themes that run through each of the courses) or around skills (e.g., reading, writing, critical thinking). Becoming aware of learning outcomes could, for example, lead to a conversation between instructors about how to reinforce what the other is doing. It could also alert them to places where they might inadvertently undermine the other’s efforts. Reviewing the learning goals emphasizes the importance of looking for opportunities to make explicit connections across each course. Awareness isn’t everything, but it can open space for the possibility of making meaningful adjustments.

Second, instructors can share the core ideas that are at the heart of their courses and that organize other course elements (Nosich, 2012). Identifying these fundamental ideas and being explicit about them with students is important because these ideas serve as anchor points, especially when students struggle. However, fundamental ideas can also serve as important landmarks across courses. Even if instructors cannot discuss another’s content with nuance, they can intentionally make connections to the big ideas. Better yet, instructors can take a “integration time-out” by asking students to relate the material in the current class to the fundamental concepts in each of the other courses. In this case, instructors are aware of the importance of integration and looking for opportunities to intentionally make connections with the key elements of another’s course.

Third, instructors can discuss how they approach giving feedback to students. It is no secret that frequent feedback promotes learning within a course, but students can also benefit from instructors being aware of what other instructors are doing. For example, instructors might use slightly different terminology to talk about similar things. Through conversation, they may decide to adopt a common lexicon. In this case, awareness promotes minor adjustments. In other cases, instructors might want to keep to their own way of doing things. However, they might be more explicit about how and why similar situations are being handled differently in different courses. The hope is that this will keep students from inadvertently going off the rails. It can also reinforce the notion that learning can be effective, albeit different, in differing contexts.

Fourth, instructors can explore why and how they promote student reflection. For example, some courses seek to exposure to new ideas, while others consider the complexity of a more focused set of ideas. Within a course, it is important to be explicit with students about the type of reflection between encouraged (e.g., deep, wide). It is also important to be explicit about structured reflections (e.g., deep, wide) across the learning community courses. Is the goal to keep a running list of the various ways the content and skills in each course are similar and different? This approach speaks to the breadth of knowledge across fields of study and captures the sense that individual students can make meaningful connections in a wide variety of ways. Or is the goal to focus on the finding the important connections between the fundamental concepts in each course? This approach speaks to the importance of sustained conversation about a narrow set of issues from multiple points of view. Both forms of reflection can be valuable, but instructors need to be intentional and explicit about structuring those experiences within and across their courses.

HIP student learning communities

If implemented well, learning communities can be HIP because they encourage students to consider the learning connections between their courses. I argue that metacognition can help instructors intentionally design and explicitly structure integrative learning opportunities. Metacognition can also help students become increasingly aware of similarities and differences across academic disciplines. In this way, metacognition and learning communities offer students the opportunity to learn how to make connections within and across fields of inquiry. Because the ability to make such connections is a hallmark of a lifelong learner, promoting metacognition through learning communities has the potential to be highly impactful in a student’s life for years to come.

References

Draeger, J. (2018). Metacognition supports HIP undergraduate research. Improve with Metacognition. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/metacognition-supports-hip-undergraduate-research/

Healey, M., & Jenkins, A. (2009). Developing undergraduate research and inquiry. York: HE Academy.

Kilgo, C. A., Sheets, J. K. E., & Pascarella, E. T. (2015). The link between high-impact practices and student learning: Some longitudinal evidence. Higher Education, 69(4), 509-525.

Kilgo, C. A., & Pascarella, E. T. (2016). Does independent research with a faculty member enhance four-year graduation and graduate/professional degree plans? Convergent results with different analytical methods. Higher Education, 71(4), 575-592.

Kuh, G. D. (2008). Excerpt from high-impact educational practices: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter. Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Nosich, G. (2012) Learning to think things through: A guide to critical thinking across the disciplines. Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

 


Embedding Metacognition into New Faculty Orientation

By Lauren Scharff, Ph.D., U. S. Air Force Academy *

When and how might faculty become aware of metacognition in general, how student metacognition might enhance student learning, and how personal metacognition might enhance their own teaching? Ideally, faculty learned about metacognition as students and thereafter consciously engaged in metacognitive practices as learners and developing professionals. Based on conversations with many faculty members, however, this is not the case. It certainly wasn’t the case for me. I don’t remember even hearing the term metacognition until after many years of working as a professor. Even now most new faculty seem to only have a vague familiarity with the term “metacognition” itself, and few claim to have spent much time considering how reflection and self-regulation, key components of metacognition, should be part of their own practice or part of the skill set they plan to help develop in their students.

While this reality is not ideal (at least for those of us true believers in the power of metacognition), realization of this lack of understanding about metacognition provides opportunities for faculty development. And why not start right at the beginning when faculty attend new faculty orientation?

New Faculty Orientation

At my institution this summer, we did just that. Our Director of Faculty Development, Dr. Marc Napolitano, worked the topic into his morning session on student learning. We designed a follow-on, small-group discussion session that encouraged faculty to actively engage in reading, personal application, and discussion of metacognition.

The reading we chose was one of my favorite metacognition articles, Promoting Student Metacognition, by Dr. Kimberly Tanner (2012). The session was only 40 minutes, so we only had them read a few pages of the article for the exercise, including her Table 1, which provides a series of questions students can ask themselves when planning, monitoring, evaluating their learning for a class session, while completing homework, while preparing for an exam. We had the new faculty jot down some reflections based on their responses to several guided prompts. Then we had time for discussion. I facilitated one of the small groups and was thus able to first-hand hear some of their responses.

Example questions:

  • What type of student were you as an undergraduate? Did you ever change your approach to learning as you went through school?
  • You obviously achieved success as an undergraduate, but do you think that you could have been more successful if you had better understood the science of learning and had teachers incorporate it into their courses?
  • If you had to share a definition of metacognition [from the reading] with students – and explain to them why it is an essential practice in learning – which definition would you use and how would you frame it with students?
  • If you wished to incorporate metacognition into your class, what approach(es) currently seems most practical for you? Why?
  • Which 3-4 of the questions in Table 1 seem like they would most helpful to use in your class? Why do these questions stand out, and how might they shape your class?

The discussion following the reading and reflection time was very rich. Only one member of my group of eight reported a good prior understanding of metacognition and how it could be incorporated into course design (she had just finished a PhD in physics education). Two others reported having vague prior familiarity with the term. However, after participating in these two faculty development sessions, all of them agreed that learning about the science of learning would have been valuable as a student regardless of level (K-12 through graduate school).

The faculty in my group represent a wide variety of disciplines, so the ways of incorporating metacognition and the questions from the table in the reading that most appealed to them varied. However, that is one of the wonderful things about designing courses or teaching practices to support student metacognition – there are many ways to do so. Thus, it’s not a problem to fit them to your way of teaching and your desired course outcomes.

We also spent a little time discussing metacognitive instruction: being aware of their choices as instructors and their students’ engagement and success, and using that awareness to guide their subsequent choices as instructors to support their students’ learning. They quickly understood the parallels with student metacognitive learning (students being aware of their choices and whether or not those choices are leading to success, and using that awareness to guide subsequent choices related to their learning). Our small groups will continue to meet throughout the coming year as a continuation of our new faculty development process. I look forward to continuing our conversations and further supporting them in becoming metacognitive instructors and promoting their students’ development as metacognitive learners.

————

Tanner, K. (2012). Promoting student metacognition. CBE—Life Sciences Education; Vol. 11, 113–120

* Disclaimer: The views expressed in this document are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U. S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U. S. Govt.


Teaching Transformation Through Becoming a Student of Learning

by Patrick Cunningham, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology,
Holly Matusovich & Sarah Williams, Virginia Tech

 Downloadable

Motivations and context:

I teach a variety of Mechanical Engineering courses at a small private undergraduate institution with approximately 2000 students. The courses I teach focus on the application of scientific theory and math to solve engineering problems. Since I started teaching I have been interested in how to help students to learn more deeply in my courses. This eventually led me to a sabbatical in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, where I established a research partnership with Dr. Holly Matusovich, and later Ms. Sarah Williams, studying student metacognitive development. We have been interested in how to help students to become more sophisticated and lifelong learners and how to aid instructors in supporting this student development. This collaboration initiated a research-to-practice cycle, where my interest in enhancing student learning led to research on student metacognitive development, and research results have influenced my teaching practice.

Description of the process:

The research-to-practice cycle has transformed my teaching by helping me become a student of learning. For me the process has involved formal educational research, but it does not have to. My implementation of the cycle follows:

  1. Identify what teaching and learning issue you care about and develop partnerships.
  2. Plan the study.
  3. Implement the study and analyze the data.
  4. Interpret the results and use them to direct modifications to your teaching.
  5. Repeat steps 1-4.

I am interested in enhancing student learning and that led to collaborative metacognition research with Dr. Matusovich. Other possible partnerships may be with colleagues, your teaching and learning center, disciplinary education researchers (e.g., engineering or physics education), or even education researchers at your own institution (e.g., educational or cognitive psychology).

We planned the research through the preparation of a successfully funded NSF grant proposal. The process included establishing research questions, specifying study phases, determining what data to collect and how, and planning for data analysis. Even if you are not engaging in formal research, the quality and success of your study will depend on a well laid out plan. As a mechanical engineering professor, my collaborators proved to be indispensable partners for this.

Early in our research, we gathered baseline data through student interviews on how students approach learning in engineering science courses and how they define learning. We have found that students predominantly rely on working and reviewing example problems as a means of learning. This approach to learning falls into the category of rehearsal strategies, where students are seeking to memorize steps and match patterns rather than develop a richer conceptual understanding. While it is important to know facts, results from learning science show rehearsal strategies are insufficient for developing adequate conceptual frameworks that are necessary for transferring concepts to new situations and being able to explain their understanding effectively to others – key aspects of engineering work. To construct such rich conceptual frameworks students also need to engage in elaborative and organizational learning strategies, but students reported underutilization of these strategies. Students’ overreliance on example problems does not align with being able to apply course concepts to real-world problems.

In reviewing the data, I also realized that I might be part of the problem. My teaching and assessments had been primarily organized around working problems with little variation. The research helped me change. I decided to scaffold students’ use of a broader range of monitoring, elaborative, and organizational strategies by changing my approach to teaching. I realized that I could empower my students by helping them learn about and refine their learning skills – even as I teach the content of the course.

I made significant changes to my course. I changed the grade category for “homework” to “development activities” to include the regular homework, and new homework learning check quizzes and video quizzes. These quizzes provided low-stakes opportunities for formative feedback to students about their conceptual understanding. I also changed my classroom activities, engaging students in evaluating and explaining given solutions with errors, recall practice, interrogating examples with “what if” questions and answering them, and creating problems for specific concepts. For the next project steps, we are collecting data on these implementations so the research-to-practice cycle can begin again.

Outcomes:

My students performed at least as well on traditional problem solving exams as students in other sections of the same course. Importantly, they reported feeling more responsible for their learning and that they had to exert more effort in their learning than in other engineering science courses. For me, this has been a more fulfilling teaching experience. Not only have I found that students asked better questions about course content, but I also had more conversations with students about how they can learn more effectively and efficiently. It has added rigor and a clarity of purpose in my teaching that reaches beyond course content.

Lessons learned:

I learned to articulate the differences between my course and other courses and to get buy-in from students as to what I was trying to do. As a teacher, student resistance to change can be hard but it is worth it to improve teaching and learning experiences. Collaborative partnerships help!

Acknowledgement:

The metacognition research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 1433757, 1433645, & 1150384. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.


Keep Calm and Improve with Metacognition: reflecting on three years of reflecting

John Draeger, SUNY Buffalo State

As Lauren and Aaron have recently noted, Improve with Metacognition (IwM) is now three years old. The site has become a space for collaboration and conversation around a range of issues loosely coming under the heading of ‘metacognition.’ My thinking about the nature of metacognition has shifted since we launched the site. I began thinking about thinking and reflecting on reflecting, but because of conversations on the site, I have come to use the term ‘metacognition’ to refer to awareness of a process (self-monitoring) and the use of that awareness to make changes in behavior (self-regulation). I’d like to take a moment to reflect on how IwM has helped me improve in three areas of my life with greater self-monitoring and self-regulation.

First, I like to think that I’ve always been the sort of teacher that encourages his students to think about their thinking. I confess, however, that my involvement with IwM has made me aware of my shortcomings with respect to developing my students’ metacognition. While I had been pretty good at nudging students to think carefully about content, I had also consistently missed opportunities to invite students to explicitly reflect on the efficacy of these strategies. For example, I took time in class to help students learn to annotate their reading, but I did not often teach them how to monitor whether these strategies were working and find alternatives when they did not. My efforts to adapt my Just-in-Time teaching strategies to be more metacognitive (Draeger, 2014, 2015, 2016) represent one of my attempts to make meaningful adjustments based on a growing awareness of my teaching practice.

Second, I am an everyday writer. I am up early most mornings working on one project or another. From that point of view, writing a blog post of 500-1000 words should have been a piece of cake. As I started blogging, however, I quickly became aware of the need to think about audience, style, and accessibility in ways that I had not thought about these considerations before. I have learned some lessons in the last three years and I am still making adjustments as I work to find “blog-sized” topics and refine my “blog voice.” I have grown as a writer because blogging for IwM has forced me to think more carefully about my craft. Further, I have found joy in writing in this short format. Much like taking a day trip to recharge your batteries, my excursions into the blogging space take me off my normal beat and path in ways that rejuvenate my other scholarly endeavors and bring fresh perspective.

Third, I had not initially thought through the role of blog space editor prior to IwM, but I’ve been delighted by regular interactions with metacognitive bloggers from around the United States (and indeed the world). Lauren, Aaron, and I regularly offer feedback to site contributors. I enjoy the opportunity to kick around ideas each week. This is, in part, because I am a nerd and relish indulging in new ideas. It is, in part, because I enjoy the writing process and this role gives me a front row seat as I watch scholars mold their ideas. It is, in part, because I enjoy the back and forth of intellectual banter. And it is, in part, because I like knowing that I am part of a growing community of metacognitive scholars. I find that my work with the IwM community crops up in all sorts of places and informs my interactions with others, both professionally and personally.

As I reflect on the last three years, I believe there will always be room for me to grow as a teacher, writer, and scholar. But I want to thank the IwM community for prompting me to think more carefully about these areas of my life. Improved awareness has led me to make subtle changes and these changes have led to improved performance. As we move into our fourth year together as an IwM community, I am coming to trust that I can keep calm, carry on, and improve with metacognition.

 

References

Draeger, J. (2014). “Just-in-Time for Metacognition.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/just-in-time-for-metacognition.

Draeger, J. (2015). “Using Just-in-Time assignments to promote metacognition.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/using-just-in-time-assignments-to-promote-metacognition.

Draeger, J. (2016). “Fine-tuning Just-in-Time assignments to encourage metacognition.” Retrieved from  https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/fine-tuning-just-time-assignments-encourage-metacognition/

 


Using Metacognition to select and apply appropriate teaching strategies

by John Draeger (SUNY Buffalo State) & Lauren Scharff (U. S. Air Force Academy)

Metacognition was a recurring theme at the recent Speaking SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) conference at Highpoint university. Invited speaker Saundra McGuire, for one, argued that metacognition is the key to teaching students how to learn. Stacy Lipowski, for another, argued for the importance of metacognitive self-monitoring through the regular testing of students. We argued for the importance of metacognitive instruction (i.e. the use of reflective awareness and self-regulation to make intentional and timely adjustments to teaching a specific  individual or group of students) as a tool for selecting and implementing teaching strategies. This post will share a synopsis of our presentation from the conference.

We started with the assumption that many instructors would like to make use of evidence-based strategies to improve student learning, but they are often faced with the challenge of how to decide among the many available options. We suggested that metacognitive instruction provides a solution. Building blocks for metacognitive instruction include 1) consideration of student characteristics, context, and learning goals, 2) consideration of instructional strategies and how those align with the student characteristics, context, and learning goals, and 3) ongoing feedback, adjustment and refinement as the course progresses (Scharff & Draeger, 2015).

Suppose, for example, that you’re teaching a lower-level core course in your discipline with approximately 35 students where the course goals include the 1) acquisition of broad content and 2) application of this content to new contexts (e.g., current events, personal situations, other course content areas). Students enrolled in the course typically have a variety of backgrounds and ability levels. Moreover, they don’t always see the relevance of the course and they are not always motivated to complete assignments. As many of us know, these core courses are both a staple of undergraduate education and a challenge to teach.

Scholarly teachers (Richlin, 2001) consult the literature to find tools for addressing the challenges just described. Because of the recent growth of SoTL work, they will find many instructional choices to choose from. Let’s consider four choices. First, Just-in-Time teaching strategies ask students to engage course material prior to class and relay those responses to their instructor (e.g., select problem sets or focused writing). Instructors then use student responses to tailor the lesson for the day (Novak, Patterson, & Gavrin, 1999; Simkins & Maier, 2004; Scharff, Rolf, Novotny, & Lee, 2013). In courses where Just-in-Time teaching strategies are used, students are more likely to read before class and take ownership over their own learning. Second, Team-Based Learning (TBL) strategies also engage students in some pre-class preparation, and then during class, students engage in active learning through a specific sequence of individual work, group work, and immediate feedback to close the learning loop (Michaelsen & Sweet, 2011). TBL has been shown to shift course goals from knowing to applying and create a more balanced responsibility for learning between faculty and students (with students taking on more responsibility). Third, concept maps provide visual representations of important connections (often hierarchical connections) between important concepts. They can help students visualize connections between important course concepts (Davies, 2010), but they require some prior understanding of the concepts being mapped. Fourth, mind mapping also leads to visual representations of related concepts, but the process is more free-form and creative, and often requires less prior knowledge. It encourages exploration of relationships and is more similar to brainstorming.

Any of these three tools might be good instructional choices for the course described above. But how is an instructor supposed to choose?

Drawing inspiration from Tanner (2012) who shared questions to prompt metacognitive learning strategies for students, we recommend that instructors ask themselves a series of questions aligned with each of our proposed building blocks to prompt their own metacognitive awareness and self-regulation (Scharff & Draeger, 2015). For example, instructors should consider the type of learning (both content and skills) they hope their students will achieve for a given course, as well as their own level of level of preparedness and time / resources available for incorporating that particular type of teaching strategy.

In the course described above, any of the four instructional strategies might help with the broad acquisition of content, and depending upon how they are implemented, some of them might promote student application of the material to new contexts. For example, while concept maps can facilitate meaningful learning their often hierarchical structure may not allow for the flexibility associated with making connections to personal context and current events. In contrast, the flexibility of mind-mapping might serve well to promote generation of examples for application, but it would be less ideal to support content acquisition. Team-Based-Learning can promote active learning and facilitate the application of knowledge to personal contexts and current events, but it requires the instructor to have high familiarity with the course and the ability to be very flexible during class as students are given greater responsibility (which may be problematic with lower-level students who are not motivated to be in the course).   Just-in-Time-Teaching can promote both content acquisition and application if both are addressed in the pre-class questions. During class, the instructor should show some flexibility by tailoring the lesson to best reach students based on their responses to the pre-class questions, but overall, the lesson is much more traditional in its organization and expectations for student engagement than with TBL. Under these circumstances, it might be that Just-in-Time strategies offer the best prospect for teaching broad content to students with varying backgrounds and ability levels.

While the mindful choice of instructional strategies is important, we believe that instructors should also remain mindful in-the-moment as they implement strategies. Questions they might ask themselves include:

  • What are you doing to “check in” with your learners to ensure progress towards daily and weekly course objectives?
  • What are signs of success (or not) of the use of the strategy?
  • How can you  adjust the technique to better meet your student needs?
  • Are your students motivated and confident, or are they bored or overwhelmed and frustrated? Are your students being given enough time to practice new skills?
  • If learning is not where it needs to be or student affect is not supportive of learning, what are alternate strategies?
  • Are you prepared to shift to them? If not, then why not?

These prompts can help instructors adjust and refine their implementation of the chosen instructional strategy in a timely manner.

If, for example, Just-in-Time assignments reveal that students are understanding core concepts but having difficulty applying them, then the instructor could tweak Just-in-time assignments by more explicitly requiring application examples. These could then be discussed in class. Alternatively, the instructor might keep the Just-in-Time questions focused on content, but start to use mind mapping during class in order to promote a variety of examples of application.  In either case, it is essential that instructors are explicitly and intentionally considering whether the instructor choice is working as part of an ongoing cycle of awareness and self-regulation. Moreover, we believe that as instructors cultivate their ability to engage in metacognitive instruction, they will be better prepared to make in-the-moment adjustments during their lessons because they will be more “tuned-in” to the needs of individual learners and they will be more aware of available teaching strategies.

While not a magic bullet, we believe that metacognitive instruction can help instructors decide which instructional strategy best fits a particular pedagogical situation and it can help instructors adjust and refine those techniques as the need arises.

References

Davies, M. (2011). Concept mapping, mind mapping and argument mapping: what are the differences and do they matter? Higher education, 62(3), 279-301.

Michaelsen, L. K., & Sweet, M. (2011). Team‐based learning. New directions for teaching and learning,(128), 41-51.

Novak, G., Patterson, E., Gavrin, A., & Christian, W. (1999). Just-in-time teaching:

Blending active learning with web technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Richlin, L. (2001). Scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching. New directions for teaching and learning, 2001(86), 57-68.

Scharff, L. and Draeger, J. (2015). “Thinking about metacognitive instruction” National Teaching and Learning Forum 24 (5), 4-6.

Scharff, L., Rolf, J. Novotny, S. and Lee, R. (2011). “Factors impacting completion of pre-class assignments (JiTT) in Physics, Math, and Behavioral Sciences.” In C. Rust (ed.), Improving Student Learning: Improving Student Learning Global Theories and Local Practices: Institutional, Disciplinary and Cultural Variations. Oxford Brookes University, UK.

Simkins, S. & Maier, M. (2009). Just-in-time teaching: Across the disciplines, across the

academy. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Tanner, K. D. (2012). Promoting student metacognition. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 11(2), 113-120.


Teaching a new course requires metacognition

by John Draeger, SUNY Buffalo State

One of the joys of being an academic philosopher is the freedom to explore new ideas. For example, the recent retirement of a colleague left a gap in my department’s usual offerings. I agreed to take over a course on the philosophy of love and sex. While I have written scholarly articles on related topics, I confess that teaching this new material had me feeling the sort of constructive discomfort that I seek to foster in my students (Draeger 2014). As a result, I experienced a heightened sense of awareness concerning what I was doing and why. In particular, I came to believe that teaching a new course requires metacognition.

As I sat down to construct the course, I was guided by the thought that philosophy can help students learn to have careful conversations about ideas that matter. With respect to this new course, I wanted students to learn to ask tough questions. Can we really promise to love someone forever? Can sex ever be meaningless? Is becoming emotionally attached to someone other than your partner worse than sleeping around? Is it possible to love more than one person at the same time or does romantic love require some form of exclusivity? Such questions prompt students to consider whether commonly held beliefs are actually justified. If these views withstand scrutiny, then students have the conceptual resources to offer a proper defense. If not, then students can begin searching for ideas worth having. Such questions can also open up a larger conversation about related concepts (e.g., trust, intimacy, respect, jealousy, loyalty).  Because much of the course material was new to me, I had not always thought through the various permutations and implications of each philosophical position. I often found myself learning “on the fly” along with my students as I reflected on my own assumptions and preconceived ideas in “real time” while the discussion unfolded in front of me.

In an earlier post (Draeger 2015), I argued that “critical thinking involves an awareness of mode of thinking within a domain (e.g., question assumptions about gender, determine the appropriateness of a statistical method), while metacognition involves an awareness of the efficacy of particular strategies for completing that task.” As I reflect on my philosophy of love and sex course, I realize that my heightened awareness contained elements of both critical thinking and metacognition. Because the material was largely new to me, I was more aware of my own critical thinking processes as I engaged in them and more “tuned into” what my students were grappling with (e.g., assumptions about love and sex, related concepts, implications of the view we are considering). I also found myself metacognitively evaluating whether my students were critically engaged and whether my choices were moving the conversation in philosophically fruitful directions. I like to think that this sort of monitoring happens in all of my classes, but I was acutely aware of its importance given that the material was unfamiliar and my discussion prompts were untested. Moreover, I like to think that I never resort to autopilot and that I am always keenly aware of fluid learning environments. However, because the material was so fresh, I could not help but engage in self-regulation. I did not have a reliable stock of examples and responses at my fingertips. Even more than usual, I found myself making intentional changes to my approach based on “in-the-moment” feedback from students (Scharff 2015).

Teaching a new course always rejuvenates me because it reminds me how much I love to learn. As the teacher, however, I was responsible for more than my own learning. Effective teaching requires thinking about the critical thinking processes of all the learners in the room, including my own. It also requires monitoring fluid learning environment and making intentional changes (often in-the-moment changes) if students are to have careful conversations about ideas that matter (e.g., love, sex). While teaching with metacognition is generally a good idea, this semester taught me that teaching a new course requires metacognition.

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References

Draeger, John (2015). “Two forms of ‘thinking about thinking’: metacognition and critical thinking.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/two-forms-of-thinking-about-thinking-metacognition-and-critical-thinking

Draeger, John (2014). “Cultivating a habit of constructive discomfort.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/cultivating-a-habit-of-constructive-discomfort
Scharff, Lauren (2015). “What do we mean by ‘metacognitive instruction?” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/what-do-we-mean-by-metacognitive-instruction/


Using Metacognition to Make International Connections

by Lauren Scharff, PhD, U. S. Air Force Academy and John Draeger, PhD, SUNY Buffalo State

If you’re one of our longer-term followers, you’ll notice that this post is a bit different from others on our site. We just wrapped up a fantastic week in Melbourne, Australia working with six colleagues from around the globe, and we want to share some of our metacognition endeavors and reflections with you. This experience was part of the second International Collaborative Writing Groups  (ICWG) that is an affiliate effort for the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSoTL).

Eight groups were part of the ICWG. The groups formed in May and met virtually over the summer to focus their topics and develop an outline prior to the face-to-face meeting this past week. Our group’s topic was The Student Learning Process, and we focused our efforts on how metacognition would support the transfer of learning from one situation or context to another. We believe the transfer of learning is one of the ultimate goals of education because it supports lifelong learning and employability.

The group’s work on how metacognition supports the transfer of learning will be revealed when it’s published, but meanwhile, we will share some ways that metacognition was part of our experience of facilitating the group. We’ll start with some pictures to set the tone. The first shows our group working: from left to right, Lauren, Susan Smith (Leeds Beckett University, UK), Lucie S Dvorakova (Honors Student, University of Queensland, Australia), Marion Tower (University of Queensland), Dominic Verpoorten (IFRES-University of Liège, Belgium), Marie Devlin (Newcastle University, UK), and Jason M. Lodge (University of Melbourne, Australia), [John Draeger taking the pic]. The second gives you a sense of the overall setting, showing multiple groups all kept to task by savvy ICWG coordinators, Mick Healy (University of Gloucestershire, retired) and Kelly Matthews (University of Queensland). Fortunately, Mick and Kelly also built in some social time for community building. The third picture shows our group at the Victoria State Library, left to right: Dominique, Sam, Marion, Sue, Marion, John, Lauren and Jason.

ICWG_SLP_Working

ICWG_mult_groups

ICWG_SLP_Social

How Metacognition Found Its Way into Our Facilitating Experiences

If you read the home page of this site, you’ll notice that we loosely define metacognition as the intertwined awareness and self-regulation of a process/skill, specifically with the goal of developing that process or skill. Although the site is focused on metacognition as it relates to teaching and learning, it can refer to any skill or process. Facilitating a group can be much like teaching, but it involves some additional processes that might more traditionally be linked to leadership and communication.

We noticed ourselves using metacognition in the following aspects of our work:

Use of Language: Given the international character of the group, self-monitoring and self-regulation allowed us to navigate differences in language and underlying assumptions. For example, through our discussions we learned that academic faculty might be referred to as ‘staff,’ ‘tutor,’ ‘instructor’ or ‘professor.’ Individual courses might be referred to as ‘classes,’ ‘modules’ or ‘units’ of study.

Assumptions about education: Our discussion revealed differences in the structures of the university systems in different countries. When discussing how students might use their learning in one course to inform their learning in another, the two North Americans on the team (John and Lauren) tended to think about transfer learning between a diverse set of courses across a broad liberal arts core curriculum in addition to transfer across more closely related courses within a major. Because undergraduate education in Australia and the United Kingdom tend not to be structured around a broad core curriculum, members of the team from these countries tended to focus on transfer learning within a particular field of study.

As we drafted our text and created a survey that was to be used in four different countries, we each engaged in self-monitoring of the terms as the conversation was in progress and would regulate behavior accordingly. For example, someone would start by saying “I think that staff might…” but then quickly add “or perhaps you might say ‘professors.’” Similarly, we would use our newly developed awareness of the different educational structures to guide our discussion about how transfer of learning might be supported across all of our learning environments.

Management of Project Scope: Both transfer of learning and metacognition are vast areas of study. Given the wide variety of experiences and individual interests in our group, we explored a wide array of possible directions for our paper, some of which we decided we would table for follow-on papers (e.g. how student level of intellectual development might impact transfer of learning and the creation of a “toolkit” for instructors that would help them support transfer of learning). Moving the conversation in fruitful directions required that all of us remain mindful of the task at hand (i.e. working towards a 6000-word article). Self-monitoring allowed us to detect when an interesting discussion had gone beyond the scope of our current article and self-regulation more quickly brought us back to the task at hand.

In summary, the international character of the writing group added a depth and richness to the conversation, but it also increased the likelihood of misunderstanding and the challenge of group management. Self-monitoring and self-regulation allowed us to overcome those challenges.

Many thanks to our group members for a fantastic face-to-face experience, and we look forward to our continued exchanges as we finalize the paper and carry on with the follow-on papers.


Two forms of ‘thinking about thinking’: metacognition and critical thinking

by John Draeger (SUNY Buffalo State)

In previous posts, I have explored the conceptual nature of metacognition and shared my attempts to integrate metacognitive practices into my philosophy courses. I am also involved in a campuswide initiative that seeks to infuse critical thinking throughout undergraduate curricula. In my work on both metacognition and critical thinking, I often find myself using ‘thinking about thinking’ as a quick shorthand for both. And yet, I believe metacognition and critical thinking are distinct notions. This post will begin to sort out some differences.

My general view is that the phrase ‘thinking about thinking’ can be the opening move in a conversation about either metacognition or critical thinking. Lauren Scharff and I, for example, took this tack when we explored ways of unpacking what we mean by ‘metacognition’ (Scharff & Draeger, 2014). We considered forms of awareness, intentionality, and the importance of understanding of various processes. More specifically, metacognition encourages us to monitor the efficacy of our learning strategies (e.g., self-monitoring) and prompts us to use that understanding to guide our subsequent practice (e.g., self-regulation). It is a form of thinking about thinking. We need to think about how we think about our learning strategies and how to use our thinking about their efficacy to think through how we should proceed. In later posts, we have continued to refine a more robust conception of metacognition (e.g., Scharff 2015, Draeger 2015), but ‘thinking about thinking’ was a good place to start.

Likewise, the phrase ‘thinking about thinking’ can be the opening move in conversations about critical thinking. Given the wide range of program offerings on my campus, defining ‘critical thinking’ has been a challenge. Critical thinking is a collection of skills that can vary across academic settings and how these skills are utilized often requires disciplinary knowledge. For example, students capable of analyzing how factors such as gender, race, and sexuality influence governmental policy may have difficulty analyzing a theatrical performance or understanding the appropriateness of a statistical sampling method. Moreover, it isn’t obvious how the skills learned in one course will translate to the course down the hall. Consequently, students need to develop a variety of critical thinking skills in a variety of learning environments. As we began to consider how to infuse critical thinking across the curriculum, the phrase ‘thinking about thinking’ was something that most everyone on my campus could agree upon. It has been a place to start as we move on to discuss what critical thinking looks like in various domains of inquiry (e.g., what it means to think like an artist, biologist, chemist, dancer, engineer, historian, or psychologist).

‘Thinking about thinking’ captures the idea students need to think about the kind of thinking skills that they are trying to master, and teachers need to be explicit about those skills that if their students will have any hope of learning them. This applies to both metacognition and critical thinking. For example, many students are able to solve complex problems, craft meaningful prose, and create beautiful works of art without understanding precisely how they did it. Such students might be excellent thinkers, but unless they are aware of how they did what they did, it is also possible that they got just lucky. Both critical thinking and metacognition help ensure that students can reliably achieve desired learning outcomes. Both require practice and both require the explicit awareness of the relevant processes. More specifically, however, critical thinkers are aware of what they are trying to do (e.g., what it means to think like an artist, biologist, chemist, dancer, engineer, historian, psychologist), while metacognitive thinkers are aware of whether their particular strategies are effective (e.g., whether someone is an effective artist, biologist, chemist, dancer, engineer, historian, psychologist). Critical thinking and metacognition, therefore, differ in the object of awareness. Critical thinking involves an awareness of mode of thinking within a domain (e.g., question assumptions about gender, determine the appropriateness of a statistical method), while metacognition involves an awareness of the efficacy of particular strategies for completing that task.

‘Thinking about thinking’ is a good way to spark conversation with our colleagues and our students about a number of important skills, including metacognition and critical thinking. In particular, it is worth asking ourselves (and relaying to our students) what it might mean for someone to think like an artist or a zoologist (critical thinking) and how we would know whether that artist or zoologist was thinking effectively (metacognition). As these conversations move forward, we should also think through the implications for our courses and programs of study. How might this ongoing conversation change course design or methods of instruction? What might it tell us about the connections between courses across our campuses? ‘Thinking about thinking’ is a great place to start such conversations, but we must remember that it is only the beginning.

References

Draeger, John (2015). “Exploring the relationship between awareness, self-regulation, and metacognition.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/exploring-the-relationship-between-awareness-self-regulation-and-metacognition/

Scharff, Lauren & Draeger, John (2014). “What do we mean when we say “Improve with metacognition”? (Part One) Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/what-do-mean-when-we-say-improve-with-metacognition/

Scharff, Lauren (2015). “What do we mean by ‘metacognitive instruction?” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/what-do-we-mean-by-metacognitive-instruction/Thinking about two forms of thinking about thinking: Metacognition and critical thinking Click To Tweet


Pausing Mid-Stride: Mining Metacognitive Interruptions In the Classroom

By Amy Ratto Parks, Ph.d., University of Montana

Metacognitive interventions are often the subject of research in educational psychology because researchers are curious about how these planned, curricular changes might impact the development of metacognitive skills over time. However, as a researcher in the fields of metacognition and rhetoric and composition, I am sometimes struck by the fact that the planned nature of empirical research makes it difficult for us to take advantage of important kairic moments in learning.

The rhetorical term kairic, taken from the Greek concept of kairos, generally represents a fortuitous window in time in which to take action toward a purpose. In terms of learning, kairic moments are those perfect little slivers in which we might suddenly gain insight into our own or our students’ learning. In the classroom, I like to think of these kairic moments as metacognitive interruptions rather than interventions because they aren’t planned ahead of time. Instead, the “interruptions” arise out of the authentic context of learning. Metacognitive interruptions are kairic moments in which we, as teachers, might be able to briefly access a point in which the student’s metacognitive strategies have either served or not served them well.

A few days ago I experienced a very typical teaching moment that turned out to be an excellent example of a fruitful metacognitive interruption: I asked the students to take out their homework and the moment I began asking discussion questions rooted in the assignment, I sensed that something was off. I saw them looking at each other’s papers and whispering across the tables, so I asked what was going on. One brave student said, “I think a bunch of us did the homework wrong.”

They were supposed to have completed a short analysis of a peer-reviewed article titled, “The Daily Show Effect: Candidate Evaluations, Efficacy, and American Youth” (Baumgartner & Morris, 2014). I got out the assignment sheet and asked the brave student, Rasa*, to read it aloud. She said, “For Tuesday, September 15. Read The Daily Show Effect: Candidate Evaluations…. oh wait. I see what happened. I read the other Jon Stewart piece in the book.” Another student jumped in and said, “I just analyzed the whole show” and a third said, “I analyzed Jon Stewart.”

In that moment, I experienced two conflicting internal reactions. The teacher in me was annoyed. How could this simple set of directions have caused confusion? And how far was this confusion going to set us back? If only half of the class had done the work, the rest of my class plan was unlikely to go well. However, the researcher in me was fascinated. How, indeed, had this simple set of instructions caused confusion? All of these students had completed a homework assignment, so they weren’t just trying to “get out of work.” Plus, they also seemed earnestly unsure about what had gone wrong.

The researcher in me won out. I decided to let the class plan go and I began to dig into the situation. By a show of hands I saw that 12 of the 22 students had done the correct assignment and 10 had completed some customized, new version of the homework. I asked them all to pause for a moment and engage in a metacognitive activity: they were to think back to moment they read the assignment and ask themselves, where did I get mixed up?

Rasa said that she just remembered me saying something about The Daily Show in class, and when she looked in the table of contents, she saw a different article, “Political Satire and Postmodern Irony in the Age of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart” (Colletta, 2014), and read it instead. Other students said that they must not have read closely enough, but then another student said something interesting. She said, “I did read the correct essay, but it sounded like it was going to be too hard to analyze and I figured that you hadn’t meant for this to be so hard, so I just analyzed the show.” Other students nodded in agreement. I asked the group to raise their hands if had read the correct essay. Many hands went up. Then I asked if they thought that the analysis they chose to do was easier than the one I assigned. All of them raised their hands.

Again, I was fascinated. In this very short conversation I had just watched rich, theoretical research play out before me. First, here was an example of the direct effect of power browsing (Kandra, Harden, & Babbra, 2012) mistakenly employed in the academic classroom. Power browsing is a relatively recently coined term that describes “skimming and scanning through text, looking for key words, and jumping from source to source” (Kandra et al., 2012).  Power browsing can be a powerful overviewing strategy (Afflerbach & Cho, 2010) in an online reading environment where a wide variety of stimuli compete for the reader’s attention. Research shows that strong readers of non-electronic texts also employ pre-reading or skimming strategies (Dunlosky & Metcalfe, 2009), however, when readers mistakenly power browse in academic settings, it may result in “in missed opportunities or incomplete knowledge” (Kandra et al., 2012, par. 18). About metacognition and reading strategies, Afflerbach and Cho (2010) write, “the good strategy user is always aware of the context of reading” (p. 206); clearly, some of my students had forgotten their reading context. Some of the students knew immediately that they hadn’t thoroughly read the assignment. As soon as I described the term “power browse” their faces lit up. “Yes!” said, Rasa, “that’s exactly what I did!” Here was metacognition in action.

Second, as students described the reasoning behind choosing to read the assigned essay, but analyze something unassigned, I heard them offering a practical example of Flower and Hayes’ (1981/2011) discussion of goal-setting in the writing process. Flower and Hayes (1981/2011) said that writing includes, “not only the rhetorical situation and audience which prompts one to write, it also includes the writer’s own goals in writing” (p. 259). They went on to say that although some writers are able to “juggle all of these demands” others “frequently reduce this large set of restraints to a radically simplified problem” (p. 259). Flower and Hayes allow that this can sometimes cause problems, but they emphasize that “people only solve the problems they set for themselves” (p. 259).

Although I had previously seen many instances of students “simplifying” larger writing assignments in my classroom, I had never before had a chance to talk with students about what had happened in the moment when they realized something hadn’t worked. But here, they had just openly explained to me that the assignment had seemed too difficult, so they had recalibrated, or “simplified” it into something they thought they could do well and/or accomplish during their given timeframe.

This metacognitive interruption provided an opportunity to “catch” students in the moment when their learning strategies had gone awry, but my alertness to the kairic moment only came as a result of my own metacognitive skills: when it became clear that the students had not completed the work correctly, I paused before reacting and that pause allowed me to be alert to a possible metacognitive learning opportunity. When I began to reflect on this class period, I realized that my own alertness came as a result of my belief in the importance of teachers being metacognitive professionals so that we can interject learning into the moment of processing.

There is yet one more reason to mine these metacognitive interruptions: they provide authentic opportunities to teach students about metacognition and learning. The scene I described here could have had a very different outcome. It can be easy to see student behavior in a negative light. When students misunderstand something we thought we’d made clear, we sometimes make judgments about them being “lazy” or “careless” or “belligerent.” In this scenario it seems like it would have been justifiable to have gotten frustrated and lectured the students about slowing down, paying attention to details, and doing their homework correctly.

Instead, I was able to model the kind of cognitive work I would actually want to teach them: we slowed down and studied the mistake in a way that led the class to a conversation about how our minds work when we learn. Rather than including a seemingly-unrelated lecture on “metacognition in learning” I had a chance to teach them in response to a real moment of misplaced metacognitive strategy. Our 15-minute metacognitive interruption did not turn out to be a “delay” in the class plan, but an opening into a kind of learning that might sometimes just have to happen when the moment presents itself.

References

Baumgartner, J., & Morris, J., (2014). The Daily Show effect: Candidate evaluations, efficacy, and American youth. In C. Cucinella (Ed.), Funny. Southlake, Fountainhead Press. (Reprinted from American Politics Journal, 34(3), (2006), pp.341-67).

Colletta, L. (2014). Political satire and postmodern irony in the age of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. In C. Cucinella (Ed.), Funny. Southlake, Fountainhead Press. (Reprinted from The Journal of Popular Culture, 42(5), (2009), pp. 856-74).

Dunlosky, J., & Metcalfe, J. (2009). Metacognition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Flower, L., & Hayes, J. (2011). A cognitive process theory of writing. In V. Villanueva & K. Arola (Eds.), Cross-talk in comp theory: A reader, (3rd ed.), (pp. 253-277). Urbana, IL: NCTE. (Reprinted from College Composition and Communication, 32(4), (Dec., 1981), pp. 365-387).

Kandra, K. L., Harden, M., & Babbra, A. (2012). Power browsing: Empirical evidence at the college level. National Social Science Journal, 2, article 4. Retrieved from http://www.nssa.us/tech_journal/volume_2-2/vol2-2_article4.htm

Waters, H. S., & Schneider, W., (Eds.). (2010). Metacognition, strategy use, and instruction. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

* Names have been changed to protect the students’ privacy.


5 Things Every Student Should Know Before Starting College

This article is about Geddes’ five tips to students who are entering college. Once you read the subtitles, I’m sure you will be intrigued to read this brief article.

Five Tips

  1. Your Professors Hate Your Favorite High School Teachers!
  2. Understand the 80/20 Rule / 20/80 Rule Shift
  3. Read Material Before Class
  4. Know the Difference Between Memorizing and Learning
  5. Be Confident. You are not broken

Geddes, Leonard. (2015) . 5 Things Every Student Should Know Before Starting College. The Learnwell Projects. Retrieved from http://www.thelearnwellprojects.com/thewell/5-things-every-student-should-know-before-starting-college/

5 Things Every Student Should Know Before Starting College

 


A Metacognitive Learning Cycle: A Better Warranty for Student Understanding?

Blank’s study “proposes a revised learning cycle model, termed the Metacognitive Learning Cycle, which emphasizes formal opportunities for teachers and students to talk about their science ideas. Working collaboratively, the researcher and a seventh-grade science teacher developed a 3-month ecology unit based on the revised model.” Results showed that even though students that were in the metacognitive classroom didn’t gain more content knowledge of ecology, they did however have more “permanent restructuring of their ecology. “

Blank, M. Lisa. (2000). A Metacognitive Learning Cycle: A Better Warranty for Student Understanding? Science Education, Volume 84, Issue 4, pages 486-506, July 2000.

A Metacognitive Learning Cycle: A Better Warranty for Student Understanding?

 


Metacognitive Development as a Shift in Approach to Learning: An in-depth study

Case and Gunstone conducted a study on students who were enrolled in an engineering course and after conducting series of interviews, they were able to provide detailed information about students’ metacognitive development or “lack thereof.”

Jennifer Case & Richard Gunstone (2002) Metacognitive Development

as a Shift in Approach to Learning: An in-depth study, Studies in Higher Education, 27:4,

459-470, DOI: 10.1080/0307507022000011561

Metacognitive Development as a Shift in Approach to Learning: An in-depth study