By Antonio Gutierrez, Georgia Southern University

In my previous post, Metacognitive Strategies: Are They Trainable?, I explored the extent to which metacognitive strategies are teachable. In my own research on how well students monitor their comprehension during learning episodes, I discovered that students reported already having a repertoire of metacognitive strategies. Yet, I have often found, in my own teaching and interaction with undergraduate and even graduate students, that having metacognitive declarative knowledge of strategies is often not sufficient to promote students’ comprehension monitoring. For instance, students may already know to draw a diagram when they are attempting to learn new concepts. However, they may not know under which circumstances it is best to apply such a strategy. When students do not know when, where and why to apply a strategy, they may in fact be needlessly expending cognitive resources for little, to no, benefit with respect to learning.

Schraw and Dennison (1994) argued that metacognition is divided in to knowledge and regulation components. Knowledge is comprised of declarative knowledge about strategies, procedural knowledge of how to apply them, and conditional knowledge about when, where, and why to apply strategies given task demands. The more that I engage students, inside and beyond my classes, the more that I become convinced that the greatest lack in metacognitive knowledge lies not in declarative or procedural knowledge, but in conditional knowledge. Students clearly have a repository of strategies and procedures to apply them. However, they seem incapable of applying those strategies effectively given the demands of the learning tasks in which they engage. So how can we enhance students’ conditional knowledge? Let’s assume that Sally is attempting to learn the concept of natural selection in her biology lesson. As Sally attempts to connect what she is learning with prior knowledge in long-term memory, she realizes she may have misconceptions regarding natural selection. She also understands that she has a variety of strategies to assist her in navigating this difficult concept. However, she does not know or understand which strategy will optimize her learning of the concept. Thus, she resorts to a trial-and-error utilization of the strategies she thinks are “best” to help her. Here we see a clear example of lack of adequate conditional knowledge. Much time and cognitive effort can be saved if we enhance students’ conditional knowledge. Calibration (the relationship between task performance and a judgment about that performance; Boekaerts & Rozendaal, 2010; Keren, 1991), a related metacognitive process, but distinct from conditional knowledge, involves the comprehension monitoring element of metacognitive regulation. As I continue my scholarship to deepen my understanding of calibration, I wonder whether conditional knowledge and calibration are more closely associated than researchers assume.

In my recent research on calibration I have often asked why the body of literature on calibration is inconclusive in its findings with respect to the effects of metacognitive strategy training on calibration. For instance, some studies have found positive effects for calibration (e.g., Gutierrez & Schraw, in press; Nietfeld & Schraw, 2002) while others have demonstrated no effect for strategy training on calibration (e.g., Bol et al., 2005; Hacker et al., 2008). This inconclusive evidence has frustrated me not only as a scholar but as a teacher as well. I suspect that these mixed findings in the literature on calibration may be due in part because researchers on calibration have neglected to address participants’ metacognitive conditional knowledge. How can we possibly hope as instructors to improve students’ comprehension monitoring when the findings on the role of metacognitive strategy instruction plays on calibration are inconclusive? So, perhaps as researchers/scholars of metacognition we are asking the wrong questions? I argue that by improving students’ metacognitive conditional knowledge, we can improve their ability to more effectively determine what they know and what they do not know about their learning (i.e., better calibrate their performance judgments to their actual performance). If students cannot effectively apply strategies given the demands of the learning episode (a conditional knowledge issue) how can we expect them to adequately monitor their comprehension (a regulation of learning issue)? Perhaps the next line of inquiry should exclusively focus on the enhancement of students’ conditional knowledge?

References

Boekaerts, M., & Rozendaal, J. S. (2010). Using multiple calibration measures in order to capture the complex picture of what affects students’ accuracy of feeling of confidence. Learning and Instruction, 20(4), 372-382. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2009.03.002

Bol, L., Hacker, D. J., O’Shea, P., & Allen, D. (2005). The influence of overt practice, achievement level, and explanatory style on calibration accuracy, and performance. The Journal of Experimental Education, 73, 269-290.

Gutierrez, A. P., & Schraw, G. (in press). Effects of strategy training and incentives on students’ performance, confidence, and calibration. The Journal of Experimental Education: Learning, Instruction, and Cognition.

Hacker, D. J., Bol, L., & Bahbahani, K. (2008). Explaining calibration accuracy in classroom contexts: The effects of incentives, reflection, and explanatory style. Metacognition Learning, 3, 101-121.

Keren, G. (1991). Calibration and probability judgments: Conceptual and methodological issues. Acta Psychologica, 77(2), 217- 273. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0001-6918(91)90036-Y

Nietfeld, J. L., & Schraw, G. (2002). The effect of knowledge and strategy explanation on monitoring accuracy. Journal of Educational Research, 95, 131-142.

by Craig Nelson, Indiana University

This is my first post for this group. I have two goals. I want to illustrate some ways that we can use metacognition in everyday, non-academic situations. And I want to begin my posts with some reflections that are naïve. Naïve in the sense that I have not digested the work already on the blog and have not turned to the metacognitive literature. This will help me recognize later when other material really challenges my own ideas. We know from work in other contexts that making initial ideas explicit rather than tacit greatly facilitates cognitive change. In the present context, we could say that it activates metacognitive processing tools.

As always, a concrete example will make this clearer. Crouch and her associates (2004) asked “Classroom Demonstrations: Learning Tools or Entertainment?” They found that just doing a demonstration in physics had little effect on students’ understanding. It was simply entertainment. If you had a relevant misconception before the demonstration, you would probably still have it afterwards. Telling someone what is wrong with their misconception or even having them listen to a carefully constructed lecture or read a carefully constructed text is “futile,” their ideas are unlikely to change (Arons, 1976). Crouch et al. tried an alternative method. Before presenting the demonstration they asked students to write down what they thought would happen and then discuss their predictions briefly with their neighbors (thus activating prior conceptions and some relevant cognitive and metacognitive frameworks). Crouch and her associates then presented the demonstration and asked the students to compare what happened to their own predictions and to discuss the comparison with their neighbors. This led to significant conceptual change.

One of the most powerful metacognitive tools is exactly this. Ask yourself what a speaker or article or book or demonstration in class or real life is likely to say or show. Make explicit predictions. Whenever possible write them down. Then monitor the extent to which your predictions work out. Congratulate yourself when you are right and ask why you were wrong when they don’t.

A second powerful general metacognitive tool is related. Ask yourself how you do something. Then ask yourself what are some alternative ways you might do it and how you might decide which one to use in the future. For example: What pattern do you follow when you shop in the grocery store? Do you start with produce or end with produce? What else? How else might you systematically shop? And now the tough part: What criteria might favor each of the patterns? For example: Ending with heavy things such as dog-food might minimize your pushing effort but it might also risk crushing more delicate items. I try to minimize the temptation to buy junk food and processed carbohydrates generally. This means that in the grocery stores I visit, I generally shop the margins (produce, meat, diary) and avoid going through the aisles with canned food, sweets, chips and related foods unless I have something on my list that is found there. The bottom line is that for the things we do and the ways that we think, we should remember to ask, first, what are the alternatives and, second, what do we gain and lose by the ones that we choose.

I will close with two foreshadowings of points I expect to develop much more extensively later. Learning to think is a strange enterprise. Our best thinking at each point has limits that we cannot see and may not even be able to comprehend even if someone points them out to us. Misconceptions are a basic example. It is very hard to avoid taking any contradictory evidence we encounter and distorting it so that it seems to support our initial misconception (Grant, 2009). We have to make predictions or engage in strangely structured discussions (What would it take to convince you to switch to a new view if you held this misconception? Grant, 2009) or otherwise be effectively challenged. Seek out such challenges to even your most seemingly solid ideas.

This inability to see new ways of thinking applies even to the general way we perceive reality. Suppose that you think that knowledge in general and science and math in particular are based on objective truth and is likely to be eternally true. You then might have deep trouble with the titles and core ideas in for example, Kline’s Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, Ioannidis’ Why Most Published Research Findings Are False or Freedman’s Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. Even deeper challenges would be presented by, among many others, Anderson’s Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be, or Baxter Magolda’s Authoring Your Life. But each of these implicitly or explicitly presents a metacognitive framework that can be very powerful once we master it. So my final hint today for metacognitive awareness is to play Elbow’s believing game: See if you can understand how an author comes to his or her conclusions even when they seem very different from your own. Or as Russell put it, the rationale for studying the history of philosophy is to understand how an intelligent person ever came to believe such things as a tool for recognizing the limits of one’s own beliefs. We need to do this broadly, not just historically.

 References

Anderson, Walter Truett. 1990. Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-To-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World. Harpercollins.

Arons, Arnold. Arons, A. B. 1976. Cultivating the capacity for formal operations: Objectives and procedures in an introductory physical science course. American Journal of Physics 44: 834-838.

Baxter Magolda, Marcia B. 2009. Authoring Your Life: Developing an Internal Voice to Navigate Life’s Challenges. Stylus.

Crouch, Catherine H., A. P. Fagen, P. Callan and E. Mazur. 2004. “Classroom Demonstrations: Learning Tools or Entertainment?” American Journal of Physics 72:835-838.

Elbow, Peter. 1973. Writing Without Teachers. Oxford University Press.

Freedman, David. 2010. Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/?single_page=true (or http://bit.ly/11aAmt0).

Grant, B. W. 2009. Practitioner Research Improved My Students’ Understanding Of Evolution By Natural Selection In An Introductory Biology Course. Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology, 6(4). http://tiee.ecoed.net/vol/v6/research/grant/abstract.html

Ioannidis, John. 2005. Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Medicine August; 2(8): e124. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ (The most downloaded article in the history of PLoS Medicine.)

Kline, Morris. 1982. Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty. Oxford University Press.

Russell, Bertrand. 1945. A History of Western Philosophy. Simon & Schuster.

by Roman Taraban, Dmitrii Paniukov, and Michelle Kiser

Texas Tech University

In a recent post to the CASP (College Academic Support Programs) listserve, a skeptical developmental programs instructor asked why more attention can’t be given to remedial readers when designing instruction for developmental education. The instructor’s concern highlights the question:  What do we know about students who are not “college-ready” and who enroll in developmental coursework? In particular, where does metacognition fit into their development as skilled readers?

We know that reading ability, as measured by standardized instruments, like the SAT reading test for high-school students, is significantly associated with reading comprehension (Taraban, Rynearson, & Kerr, 2000). But what underlies this reading ability and can it be enhanced in college students?  Prior research revealed a several things.  As University students progress from freshman to senior years, they show small but significant growth in their use of metacognitive reading strategies (Taraban, 2011). This growth happens naturally – i.e., college students typically do not take courses that teach metacognition.  In trying to deliberately develop metacognitive reading strategies in developmental reading students, however, we found that the process can be slow and costly, but it can be done!  In a study of developmental college readers, it took roughly one semester of regular practice with a look-back reading strategy (Garner, 1987) in order to show significant improvement in reading comprehension (Taraban et al., 1997).  In addition to semester-long practice, the intervention was implemented in one-on-one tutoring, pointing to the instructional costs of bringing about detectable gains in reading skills in a remedial population.

Recently my colleagues and I had an opportunity to work with developmental readers who were enrolled in a developmental reading course at a major public research university. The students were primarily freshmen (mean number of completed credits = 16.7). We were primarily interested in three questions: 1) Could a teacher-implemented intervention improve these students’ comprehension and retention of ideas from expository texts? 2) Which metacognitive reading strategies did these students apply on their own? and 3) Was students’ use of metacognitive strategies associated with better retention of information?

The students were asked to read two expository passages and to recall as much as they could either immediately or after a 48-hour delay. They were told that they would be asked later to recall the information from the texts, but they were not prompted to apply any specific learning strategies. The two texts used for the study were each about 250 words in length and had an average Flesch-Kincaid readability score of 8.2 grade level. The passages contained 30 idea units each. Idea units are simple units of meaning derived from the text, and here were used to score the recall data. The participants read and studied one of the passages without interruption (Uninterrupted Condition), and they read and studied one of the passages paragraph-by-paragraph, and then all together (Segmented Condition).  Participants spent an equal amount of total time (10 minutes) reading and studying each of the texts. After they recalled the information, we asked them to report the strategies they used to learn the information. The specific self-reported strategies were organized into six types, as shown in Table 1. To score the strategy-use data, participants were given credit for multiple strategy types, but not for repetitions of the same strategy for the same text.

 TABLE 1: Key Types of Self-Reported Strategies

1. REPETITION: Re-Reading; Memorize; Repetition
2. FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC ELEMENTS: Key words; Key concepts; Grouping terms or sentences; Identifying related concepts; Parts that stood out; Parts that were difficult
3. SELF TESTING: Summarizing; Recalling; Quizzing self; Forming acronyms
4. GENERATING COGNITIVE ELABORATIONS: Activating prior knowledge; Recalling related experiences; Re-explaining parts of the text in other ways; Comparing and contrasting ideas; Using analogies; Using mental imagery
5. SEGMENTATION: Grouping sentences for purposes of study; Divide by paragraph
6. GENERAL: Read slowly; Read thoroughly; Concentrate; Understand passage

Regression analyses were conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the reading approach (Uninterupted vs Segmented) in conjunction with participants’ self-reported use of the six strategy types (see Table 1). Turning to the immediate test, the reading approach mattered. When participants read and studied a segmented text they had significantly higher recall of idea units (M = 11.64) compared to non-segmented text (M = 7.93). Further, all of the participants reported using reading strategies.  Of the six strategy types, participants’ application of FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC ELEMENTS during reading was strongly associated with better recall of information from the text, and REPETITION was also important.  Considering the delayed test next, the reading approach used for the text that was read two days earlier did not matter.  However, using the strategy type SELF TESTING during reading was strongly associated with better recall, and FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC ELEMENTS was also helpful.

To address our skeptical developmental instructor, our data suggest that developmental reading instructors can structure how students process information in order to increase the number of ideas students retain, for follow-up activities like inferencing and brainstorming. The data also showed that developmental readers naturally use metacognitive reading strategies to boost their retention of information both immediately and at a delay.  Interestingly, there is no single best strategy.  Rather, FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC ELEMENTS during reading is most effective for immediate retention and SELF-TESTING during reading is most effective for longer-term retention.  Developmental students’ natural disposition to apply strategies may open opportunities for instructors to further guide, enhance, and channel these metacognitive skills to better benefit students.  What is heartening in these data is the finding that these academically-challenged students self-initiate metacognitive activities to monitor and regulate their study behaviors in order to enhance their academic performance.

References

Garner, R. (1987). Metacognition and reading comprehension. Norword, NJ: Ablex.

Taraban, R. (2011). Information fluency growth through engineering curricula: Analysis of students’ text-processing skills and beliefs. Journal of Engineering Education, 100(2), 397-416.

Taraban, R., Becton, S., Shufeldt, M., Stirling, T., Johnson, M., & Childers, K. (1997). Developing underprepared college students’ question-answering skills. Journal of Developmental Education, 21 (1), 20-22, 24, 26, 28.

Taraban, R., Rynearson, K., & Kerr, M. (2000). College students’ academic performance and self-reports of comprehension strategy use. Journal of Reading Psychology, 21, 283-308.

by Lauren Scharff, U.S. Air Force Academy*

During the spring 2014 semester I decided to try an explicitly metacognitive approach to leadership development in my Foundations for Leadership Development course in the Behavioral Sciences department at the United States Air Force Academy.

I had taught the course twice before and had many discussions with other course instructors. Overall, my sense was that many of our students didn’t intentionally and systematically connect what they were doing and learning in the course with their own personal leadership development. This is despite a paper that focused on a personal leadership development plan, and a video project that focused on implementing positive change within their squadrons.

This course is an upper-level, required core courses in our curriculum, and my section was one of more than 30 with approximately a dozen different instructors teaching sections. At our institution, much of the course structure within core courses is standardized across instructors, but I had 20% of the points with which to do what I desired, as long as 10% somehow assessed accountability for lesson preparation.

I was aware of a foundation of research in skill development (e.g. Svinicki, 2004), so I knew that in order to most effectively develop skills, people need multiple opportunities for practice coupled with feedback.  Feedback leads to awareness of strengths, shortcomings, and possible alternate strategies. This understanding of skill development became intertwined with my increasing focus on metacognitive approaches. I came to the conclusion that perhaps part of the less-than-ideal student connection to the course material and objectives occurred because our course activities that were designed to support that connection didn’t provide (require) enough opportunities for practice and continued awareness, especially beyond the classroom and course requirements.

As I prepared for the semester I drew on resources from The Learning Record, which outlines Five Dimensions of Learning that connected well with goals I had for my students’ leadership development: confidence and independence, knowledge and understanding, skills and strategies, use of prior and emerging experience, and critical reflection. The site also shares well-developed activities and assignments that supported my goal of using a metacognitive approach to promote my students’ leadership development.

Ultimately, I designed my course to be centered around journal entries, which I also completed.  During each lesson we shared our understandings, questions, and reflections based on the readings, as well as examples of personal observations of leadership and our reflections on how what we were learning might be effectively applied to real situations. More specifically, the journal entries included 1) answers to guided reflection questions about each reading for each lesson, and 2) at least two personal leadership observations and analyses each week. I created a simple grading system so that I wouldn’t be overloaded with assessing journal entries every lesson. (Journal assignment)

A quick poll of my students (N=13) indicated that none of them regularly kept personal journals, and only two had ever had any sort of journal assignment for a class. Thus, this requirement for regular journal writing required a change of habit for them that also represented increased time and energy for class preparation. Although there was some adjustment, when I asked for feedback after two weeks of class, the students were unanimous in their agreement that they were more deeply reading than if I had incorporated reading quizzes for accountability and that they preferred to continue the personal and reading reflections even though they involved frequent writing. Discussion during class was deeper and more engaging than in previous semesters.

Twice during the semester, students wrote evidence-based personal development evaluations, based on a shared example from The Learning Record. Students chose examples from their journals to support their evaluations of their own leadership development. These evaluation exercises forced them to thoughtfully review their observations across the weeks of the semester and develop ongoing awareness of their leadership strengths and weaknesses as well as an understanding of alternate strategies and when/how they might be useful for their leadership efforts. (Personal Development Evaluation assignment)

I also added a question each time that had them evaluate the journal approach and course design.  We made some tweaks at mid-semester. By the end of the semester, all but one student reported that the journal entries deepened their learning and personal awareness of their leadership development. While I will likely make some further tweaks in future semesters, I believe that this approach was a success, and that it could be scaled up for larger classes (see the simplified grading scheme in the Journal assignment). Below are sample comments from the final evaluation assignment (released with student permission):

“The leadership journal has had a tremendous effect on my personal development as a leader.  The journal has made me aware of my strengths and weaknesses…. The journal allowed me an avenue to give time and actually think about how I am doing as a leader and peer within my environment.”

 

“The personal observations were definitely helpful for documenting our successes and failures, which we can look back upon and improve. This relates not only to our personal leadership development, but to how we learn about ourselves.”

 

“These journals have taken all of us on a journey through the semester.  They undoubtedly began as something that we disliked and looked down upon each week.  However, I have really grown to love and understand this application of leadership growth.  They not only provide a chance for us to look back on our leadership gains and failures, they offer an opportunity for us to challenge ourselves in order to write about the things we want to see in ourselves.  The journals have become much more than a simple task of writing on a week-to-week basis.  They have grown into an outpouring of our character and lives as we turn the page from underclassmen to upper-class leaders and eventually to lieutenants in a few short months.  I believe that these journals are also a metaphor for many leadership challenges in that they will be frequent, difficult, and time consuming, but in the end they will let us all grow.  ….my reflections are not simply babble, …they actually represent significant growth and understanding of myself.”

References:

Svinicki, Marilla. 2004. Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Co, Inc.

The Learning Record: http://www.learningrecord.org/

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* 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.