by Ed Nuhfer (Contact: enuhfer@earthlink.net; 208-241-5029)

Part 1 introduced the nature of adult intellectual development in terms of the stages ascended as one becomes educated. Each stage imparts new abilities that are valuable. This Part 2 reveals why awareness of these stages is important and offers metacognitive exercises through which students can begin to engage with what should be happening to them as they become better thinkers.

 

A disturbingly tiny contingent of professors in disciplines outside adult education have read the adult developmental research and recognized the importance of Perry’s discovery. Even fewer pass on this awareness directly to their students. Thus, recognition that the main value of a university education does not lie in acquired knowledge of facts and formulae but rather in acquiring higher level thinking abilities remains off the radars of most students.

Given what we know from this research, a potential exists for American higher education’s evolving into a class-based higher educational system, with a few institutions for the privileged supporting curricula that emphasize developing the advanced thinking needed for management and leadership, and a larger group of institutions fielding curricula emphasizing only content and skills for producing graduates destined to be managed. Until students in general (and parents) recognize how these two educational models differ in what they offer in value and advantages for life, they will fail to demand to be taught higher-order thinking. Overcoming this particular kind of ignorance is a struggle that neither individual students nor a free nation can afford to lose.

 

Teaching Metacognition: Mentoring Students to Higher Levels of Thinking

One way to win this struggle is to bring explicit awareness of what constitutes becoming well educated directly to students, particularly those not enrolled in elite, selective schools. All students should know what is happening to them, which requires understanding the stages of adult intellectual development and the sequence in which they occur offers the explicit framework needed to guide students to do beneficial “thinking about thinking.” (See Part 1, Table 1.) This research-based framework offers the foundation required for understanding the value of higher-level thinking. It offers a map for the journey on which one procures specific abilities by mastering successively higher stages of adult thinking. Through learning to use this framework metacognitively, individuals can start to discover their current stage of intellectual development and determine what they need for achieving the next higher stage.

I have included two exercises for students to show how the research that informs what we should be “thinking about” can be converted into metacognitive components of lessons. These modules have been pilot tested on  students in introductory general education and critical thinking courses.

The first, “Module 12 – Events a Learner Can Expect to Experience,” uses the research that defines the Perry stages (Table 1) as a basis for authoring an exercise that guides students through key points to “think about” as they start to reflect upon their own thinking. Instructors can employ the module as an assignment or an in-class exercise, and should modify it as desired. For many students, this will serve as their first exposure to metacognition. If this is the reader’s first introduction to adult intellectual development, work through this module, ideally with a colleague on a lunch break. Start to procure some of the key resources listed in the references for your personal library.

With the exception of Perry Stages 7, 8, and 9, Module 12 largely addresses the cognitive realm. However, when intellectual development occurs successfully, affective or emotional development occurs in parallel as one advances through higher cognitive stages (see Nuhfer, 2008). Metacognition or “thinking about thinking” should extend also to a reflective “thinking about feelings.” Since the 1990s, we have learned that our feelings about our learning–our affective component of thinking– influence how well we can learn. Further, our affective development or “emotional intelligence” determines how well that we can work with others by connecting with the through their feelings, which is a huge determinant in work and life success.

The second “Module 4—Enlisting the Affective Domain” helps students to recognize why the feelings and emotions that occur as one transitions into higher stages are important to consider and to understand. At the higher levels of development, one may even aspire to deeply understand another by acquiring the capacity for experiencing another’s feelings (Carper, 1978; Belenky and others, 1986).

Frequent inclusion of metacognitive components in our assignments is essential for providing students with the practice needed for achieving better thinking. Guiding students in what to “think about” can help students engage in challenges that arise at the finer scales of metadisciplines, disciplines, courses, and lessons. This requires us to go beyond articulating: “What should students learn and how can we assess this?”  by extending our planning to specify “What is essential that students should think about, and how can we mentor them into such thinking?”

REFERENCES CITED (additional references are provided in the two exercises furnished)

Arum, R. and Roksa, J. (2011). Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Belenky, M.F., B.M. Clinchy, N.R. Goldberger, and J.M. Tarule. (1986) Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind, New York: Basic Books. (Reprinted in 1997).

Carper, B. A. (1978). Fundamental patterns of knowing in nursing. Advances in Nursing Science 1 1 13–24.

Flavell, J. H. (1976). Metacognitive aspects of problem solving. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), The nature of intelligence (pp. 231–235). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Journal of Adult Development (2004). Special volume of nine papers on the Perry legacy of cognitive development. Journal of Adult Development (11, 2) 59-161 Germantown NY: Periodicals Service Co.

Nuhfer, E. B (2008) The feeling of learning: Intellectual development and the affective domain: Educating in fractal patterns XXVI. National Teaching and Learning Forum, 18 (1) 7-11.

Perry, W. G., Jr. (1999). Forms of intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years. (Reprint of the original 1968 1st edition with introduction by L. Knefelkamp). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

by Ed Nuhfer (Contact: enuhfer@earthlink.net; 208-241-5029)

When those unfamiliar with “metacognition” first learn the term, they usually hear: “Metacognition is thinking about thinking.” This is a condensation of John Flavell’s (1976) definition: “Metacognition refers to one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processes or anything related to them…” Flavell’s definition reveals that students cannot engage in metacognition until they first possess a particular kind of knowledge. This reminds us that students do not innately understand what they need to be “thinking about” in the process of “thinking about thinking.” They need explicit guidance.

When students learn in most courses, they engage in a three-component effort toward achieving an education: (1) gaining content knowledge, (2) developing skills (which are usually specific to a discipline), and (3) gaining deeper understanding of the kinds of thinking or reasoning required for mastery of the challenges at hand. The American higher educational system generally does best at helping students achieve the first two. Many students have yet to even realize how these components differ, and few ever receive any instruction on mastering Component 3. Recently, Arum and Roksa (2011) summarized the effectiveness of American undergraduate education in developing students’ capacity for thinking. The record proved dismal and revealed that allowing the first two components to push aside the third produces serious consequences.

This imbalance has persisted for decades. Students often believe that education is primarily about gaining content knowledge—that the major distinction between freshmen and seniors is “Seniors know more facts.” Those who never get past this view will likely acquire a degree without acquiring any significantly increased ability to reason.

We faculty are also products of this imbalanced system, so it is not too surprising to hear so many of us embracing “covering the material” as a primary concern when planning our courses. Truth be told, many of us have so long taught to content and to skills necessary for working within the disciplines that we are less practiced in guiding our students to be reflective on how to improve their thinking. Adding metacognitive components to our assignments and lessons can provide the explicit guidance that students need. However, authoring these components will take many of us into new territory, and we should expect our first efforts to be awkward compared to what we will be authoring after a year of practice. Yet, doing such work and seeing students grow because of our efforts is exciting and very worthwhile. Now is the time to start.

Opportunities for developing metacognitive reflection exist at scales ranging from single-lesson assignments to large-scale considerations. In my first blog for this site, I chose to start with the large-scale considerations of what constitutes development of higher-level thinking skills.

 

What Research Reveals about Adult Thinking

More than five decades have passed since William Perry distinguished nine stages of thinking that successful adult intellectual development (Table 1) produces. The validity of his developmental model in general seems firmly established (Journal of Adult Development, 2004). Contained within this model is the story of how effective higher education improves students’ abilities to think and respond to challenges. Knowing this story enables us to be explicit in getting students aware of what ought to be happening to them if higher education is actually increasing their capacity for thinking. This research enables us to guide students in what to look for as they engage in the metacognition of understanding their own intellectual development.

Enhanced capacity to think develops over spans of several years. Small but important changes produced at the scale of single quarter or semester-long courses are normally imperceptible to students and instructors alike. Even the researchers who discovered the developmental stages passed through them as students, without realizing the nature of the changes that they were undergoing. For learning that occurs in the shorter period of a college course, it is easier to document measurable changes in learning of disciplinary content and the acquisition of specific skills than it is to assess changes in thinking. Research based on longitudinal studies of interviews with students as they changed over several years finally revealed the nature of these subtle changes and the sequence in which they occur (Table 1).

 

Table 1: A Summary of Perry’s Stages of Adult Intellectual Development

Stage 1 & 2 thinkers believe that all problems have right and wrong answers, that all answers can be furnished by authority (usually the teacher), and that ambiguity is a needless nuisance that obstructs getting at right answers.

Stage 3 thinkers realize that authority is fallible and does not have good answers for all questions. Thinkers at this stage respond by concluding that all opinions are equally valid and that arguments are just about proponents’ thinking differently. Evidence to the contrary does not change this response.

Stage 4 thinkers recognize that not all challenges have right or wrong answers, but they do not yet recognize frameworks through which to resolve how evidence best supports one among several competing arguments.

Stage 5 thinkers can use evidence. They also accept that evaluations that lead to best solutions can be relative to the context of the situation within which a problem occurs.

Stage 6 thinkers appreciate ambiguity as a legitimate quality of many issues. They can use evidence to explore alternatives. They recognize that the most reasonable answers often depend upon both context and value systems.

Stages 7, 8 and 9 thinkers incorporate metacognitive reflection in their reasoning, and they increasingly perceive how their personal values act alongside context and evidence to influence chosen decisions and actions.

In part 2 of this blog, we will provide metacognitive class exercises that help students to understand what occurs during intellectual development and why they must strive for more than learning content when gaining an education.