by Roman Taraban, Ph.D., Texas Tech University
In 1973, cognitive psychologists Kahneman and Tversky (1973) wanted to present their study participants with a stereotypical description of engineers:
Jack is a 45-year old man. He is married and has four children. He is generally conservative, careful, and ambitious. He shows no interest in political and social issues and spends most of his free time on his many hobbies, which include home carpentry, sailing, and mathematical puzzles. (p. 241)
When asked if they thought Jack was an engineer, 90% of the participants thought he was.
Whatever stereotypes of engineers may persist to the present day (e.g., geek, introvert, asocial: http://www.thecreativeengineer.com/2008/12/16/a-few-engineering-myths/ ), various parts of the engineering community are trying to create “a whole new engineer” (Goldberg & Somerville, 2014). Cross-disciplinary centers have been established at universities, like iFoundry which was launched in 2008 at the University of Illinois, in order to prepare engineering students for working in the 21st century. One mandate was to promote “deep reflection and attention to the complex system in which engineering education is embedded” (https://ifoundry.illinois.edu/who-we-are/what-ifoundry ).
On a larger scale, the Franlin W. Olin College of Engineering admitted its first class in 2002 in order to implement a full-scale hands-on, project-based and design curriculum. Olin College provides students with funding for “passionate pursuits,” which are personal projects of academic value proposed by students https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_W._Olin_College_of_Engineering. STEM is being transformed to STEAM, where the addition of A represents Artful Thinking in the context of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (Radziwell et al., 2015). To develop artful thinking a facilitator might present a painting and ask students: What do you see? What does it make you think? What is happening? Why do you think so? These questions help learners develop dispositions to observe, describe, question, reason, and reflect. The whole new engineer is becoming a whole lots of things, but is the new engineer becoming more metacognitive?
We know that engineering students can be metacognitive when solving textbook problems (Taraban, 2015). Indeed, by now there is an extensive corpus of research on students’ textbook problem-solving in introductory physics and other areas of STEM. Explaining the material to oneself with the knowledge that this will help one better understand it, or testing oneself with the knowledge that this will help one more reliably retrieve the information later, are examples of metacognitive processes and knowledge. Case and Marshall (1995) described a developmental pathway by which students transition towards deeper understanding of domain concepts and principles, which they labeled the conceptual deep approach to learning, and which is: “relating of learning tasks to their underlying concepts or theory” with the intention “to gain understanding while doing this” (p. 609). Basically, their suggestion is that over the course of development students recognize that a goal of learning is to understand the material more deeply, and that this recognition guides how they learn. Draeger (2015), and others, have suggested that this kind of monitoring of the effectiveness of learning strategies and regulating one’s behavior are characteristic of metacognitive thinking.
The current re-design of the traditional engineer involves sweeping changes, in the classroom, in the university, and in professional practice, and it aims to do this, in part, by infusing more reflection into engineering training and practice. So, what is a reflective practitioner, and are reflective practitioners metacognitive thinkers?
Schön (1987) suggested that reflective practitioners think carefully about what they are doing as they are doing it. Reflective practitioners assess and revise their existing practices and strive to develop more effective behaviors. They critically assess their behavior as a means to improving it. As Schön (1987) puts it, reflective practice is a “dialogue of thinking and doing through which I become more skillful” (p. 31). Schön maintained “that there is a core of artistry, an exercise of intelligence, and a kind of knowing inherent in professional practice, which we can only learn about by carefully studying the performance of extremely competent professionals” (Osterman, 1990, p. 133).
Through reflective practice we submit our behaviors to critical analysis, asking questions like these: What am I doing? What effect is it having? (Osterman, 1990). This very much reminds one of the distinction that Draeger (2015) made between metacognition and critical thinking. Specifically, one can be a critical thinker without being metacognitive. The two processes can overlap but are not identical. Simply, to be metacognitive, one would need to think about the reflective processing itself. Metacognitions would involve knowledge of the benefits of reflective practice, how it relates to self, and metacognitive processes related to monitoring and controlling the reflective practices. Imagine observing any expert – an expert teacher, an expert golfer, an expert acrobat – and striving to mimic that expertise through carefully observing and critiquing one’s own performance. That’s reflective practice. It’s about trying to get a job done in the best possible way. In a complementary fashion, metacognitive knowledge and processing involve intentionally and consciously monitoring and regulating those reflective practices.
In A Whole New Engineer (Goldberg & Somerville, 2014) the authors assert that
Here we are calling attention to the importance of the Whole New Engineer’s ability to do three things:
- Notice and be aware of thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
- Reflect and learn from experience.
- Seek deeper peace, meaning, and purpose from noticing and reflection. (p. 114)
Goldberg and Somerville (2014) make a call to be more attentive and sensitive to surroundings, to notice and reflect, but not necessarily to be metacognitive in those contexts – they are not clear about the latter point. Thus, it may be safe to say that being metacognitive doesn’t automatically come through reflective practice, critical thinking, mindfulness, or artful thinking strategies. Metacognition represents a distinct type of knowledge and process that can potentially enhance the effects of the aforementioned. The whole new engineer can be a whole lot of things, but is not automatically a metacognitive engineer. Simply, an engineering student, or even a practicing engineer, can be good at certain design projects, for instance, and develop a critical eye for that work, but without necessarily developing metacognitive awareness around when to shift strategies or techniques in order to be more effective.
References
Draeger, J. (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/ .
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1973). On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review, 80(4), 237-251. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0034747
Osterman, K. F. (1990). Reflective practice: A new agenda for education. Education and Urban Society, 22(2), 133-152.
Radziwill, N. M., Benton, M. C., & Moellers, C. (2015). From STEM to STEAM: Reframing what it means to learn. The STEAM Journal, 2(1), Article 3.
Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. How professionals think in action. London: Temple Smith.
Taraban, R. (2015). Metacognition in STEM courses: A developmental path. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/metacognition-in-stem-courses-a-developmental-path/