Month: November 2014

Transparency and Metacognition

by James Rhem (Executive Editor, National Teaching and Learning Forum)

Some readers may know that The National Teaching and Learning FORUM has undertaken a series of residencies on campuses across the country looking at teaching and learning at a variety of institutions, and all the efforts to support and improve it. Currently I’m at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas where Mary-Ann Winkelmas is coordinator of instructional development and research.

One of the things Mary-Ann brought to Las Vegas from her previous work at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois is something called the Transparency Project, a project carried out in collaboration with AAC&U. To my mind this approach to increasing students’ connections with and understanding of the assignments they’re given in the courses they take seems to have a lot to do with metacognition. Perhaps it’s a homely version, I’m not sure, but I think it’s something those interested in improving student performance through metacognitive awareness ought to know about. So, that’s my post for the moment. Take a look at the impressive body of research the project has already amassed, and the equally impressive results in improved student performance, and see if you don’t agree there’s a relation to metacognitive approaches, something to take note of.

Here’s a link to a page of information on the project with even more links to the research:

http://www.unlv.edu/provost/teachingandlearning


Metacognition for Purposeful Living

by Charity Peak, U.S. Air Force Academy*

One of my most remarkable professional experiences was teaching a humanities course called “Leading Lives That Matter.” After reading a variety of philosophical texts in an anthology by the same name, students explored the meaning of their lives.  Students identified what type of monuments they would want erected in their honor and wrote their own obituaries.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t a philosophy course; it was actually quite pragmatic.  It also wasn’t a higher level course for juniors or seniors.  And it wasn’t optional.  It was a mandatory requirement for all freshmen before embarking on their educational journeys.  The course was designed to help students reflect on why they were pursuing an education and determine a potential vision for their future after obtaining their degrees.  After all, if you’re going to spend thousands of dollars over several years, why not ask the important questions first?

Many students will say that they are going to school because they want to improve the lives of their families or because they hope to earn more money in a better paying job. But what do faculty do to help students see the grander vision?  What is an instructor’s role in supporting students to understand how their gifts and talents could transform the world around them?  Metacognition requires developing self-awareness and the ability to self-assess. It requires reflection about one’s education and learning – past, present, and future.  Helping students develop metacognitive skills is essential for them to become self-regulated learners with a vision for the future (Zimmerman, 2002).  Faculty, then, are ideally positioned to help students learn to leverage their self-awareness for purposeful living.

Each semester I teach, I encounter a student in distress, desperately struggling to identify how their education can help them develop into the person they wish to become. I am not a trained counselor, yet I often find myself coaching and mentoring these adults – both young and old – to determine how they can utilize their gifts to contribute to the world in some way.  As John F. Kennedy so eloquently shared with us, “One person can make a difference, and every person should try” (http://thinkexist.com).  But so many people seek higher education for such limited reasons – money and jobs.  Instead of being focused on how an education could aid students’ chances of surviving fiscally, what if faculty embraced their role of facilitating greatness?

This insight has transcended all of the settings in which I have taught throughout my career – from elementary school up through adult learning – but it has never been more evident than where I am now. Advising students at a military service academy lends itself to even more critical conversations about purpose and meaning.  These young people are receiving a “free” education, which helps their family’s financial commitment, but at a great price – risking their lives for their country.  It becomes apparent very quickly that what brings students to a military service academy is not what keeps them there.  While all college students go through a bit of an identity crisis, these students will potentially pay the ultimate price for their commitment to their country.  They must be solid in their decision, and they must evolve into an altruistic state much earlier than the average college student.  Money and job security are not enough to get you through a service academy’s rigor, let alone the life of a military officer.  As a faculty member, it is my duty to help these young people make the right choice, one that is good for them and their country.

While these metacognitive insights are quite visible at a military service academy, all faculty should commit to the duty of enabling metacognitive reflection about purposeful living at their own institutions. They should facilitate courses, or even a series of conversations, that encourage students to be metacognitive about who they want to be when they grow up – not what job they want to possess (self-seeking) but how they want to contribute (community building).  In order to venture down this path, however, we as faculty and advisors need to provide ample time and guidance for self-reflection in and out of our courses.  We should help students to gain self-awareness about their gifts and talents so that they can see their collegiate journey as a path toward purposeful living.

If vocation is “the place where deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” (Buechner, p. 112), faculty should consider what role they play in helping students to become metacognitive about how their talents lead to majors, which guide careers, and eventually become paths to greatness. By helping our students identify how to intentionally lead lives that matter, we too can benefit vicariously by renewing our spirit to teach.  After all, many of us chose this vocation because of our own yearning to live purposefully.

References:

Buechner, F. (2006). Vocation. In Schwehn, M. R., & Bass, D. C. (Eds.), Leading lives that matter: What we should do and who we should be (pp. 111-12). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory into Practice 41(2): 64-70. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1477457

 

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


Comprehension Monitoring: The Role of Conditional Knowledge Part 2

by Antonio Gutierrez, Georgia Southern University

In my previous post, I discussed the role conditional knowledge (i.e., the why, when, and where to apply strategies given task demands) plays in learners’ ability to calibrate their performance against their actual performance. This is in light of debates about the relations between the various dimensions of metacognition. Calibration is a component of one’s ability to monitor comprehension, which is a regulatory function. Conditional knowledge, on the other hand, is part of the knowledge component of metacognition. As a researcher I often wonder whether instead of making assumptions that these various metacognitive functions are related whether perhaps we should empirically test these assumptions. In metacognitive research it is often assumed that the knowledge and regulation aspects of metacognition are related. From a theoretical perspective, this makes sense. However, for us to assume that this is the case with all samples and populations may be a stretch, especially given the diversity and individual differences among learners. In this vein, I am currently seeking ethics approval to conduct research with middle school students because this is an understudied population with respect to metacognition. In this proposed research I plan to not only investigate calibration among middle school students and the influence metacognitive strategy training has on learners’ calibration, but I plan to empirically assess the association between the eight dimensions of metacognition (Knowledge: declarative, procedural, and conditional; Regulation: planning, information management, debugging strategies; comprehension monitoring; and evaluation of learning). I will also attempt to test the predictive power of various components of metacognition on learners’ calibration. I am especially interested in empirically measuring the association between conditional knowledge and calibration as well as the predictive power of conditional knowledge on calibration. I expect that metacognitive strategy training will improve learners’ performance, confidence judgments, and also their calibration. I also suspect that those with greater conditional knowledge will have better calibration, and hence, I expect conditional knowledge to strongly predict calibration.

This particular study is one among a series of scientific investigations on the validity of theoretical claims made when researchers discuss metacognition. In my attempt to provide educators a toolkit of domain-general metacognitive strategies they can readily apply in their classrooms, this series of studies will help me provide the empirical evidence necessary to demonstrate the utility and relevance of metacognitive strategies to not only scholars but practitioners as well. These strategies have been adapted from an unpublished pilot study I conducted prior to my dissertation. This research will help me to continue to refine these strategies to better suit adolescents. Moreover, it will shed some light on the link between conditional metacognitive knowledge and calibration, which is a topic that began with earlier posts. Stay tuned for preliminary results of my first investigation.


Measuring Metacognitive Judgments

In Gregg Schraw’s (2009) chapter, Measuring Metacognitive Judgments, he artfully provides a taxonomy of calibration measures that attempt to assesses metacognitive judgment of learning. For more information, follow the hyperlink below.

Schraw, G. (2009). Measuring Metacognitive Judgments. In D. J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, &  A. C. Graesser (Eds.). Handbook of metacognition in education, 415.