Month: December 2016

Bringing a Small Gift – The Metacognitive Experience

by Roman Taraban, Ph.D.,  Texas Tech University

In the Christmas song, “The Little Drummer Boy,” the young boy brings his humble gift to the “mighty king,” which he presents from the heart. This is an apt situation to bring up at this time of year, for you too, might have received a small gift. For ‘tis the season for metacognition.

John Flavell and others generally describe metacognition as thinking about thinking. More specifically, “Metacognitive knowledge is one’s stored knowledge or beliefs about oneself and others as cognitive agents, about tasks, about actions or strategies, and about how all these interact to affect the outcomes of any sort of intellectual enterprise” (Flavell, 1999, p. 906). Flavell (1999) broadened metacognitive theory to include affect: “Metacognitive experiences are conscious cognitive or affective experiences that occur during the enterprise and concern any aspect of it—often, how well it is going” (p. 906). Affect, as part of metacognitive experiences, is important because if you have the feeling that something is difficult to comprehend, remember, or solve, those feelings may trigger careful metacognitive reflection and changes in goals or strategies (Papaleontiou-Louca, 2008). Nuhfer (2014), in a related vein, affirms the crucial role of affect to metacognition in developing students’ metacognitive skills: “[A]ttempts to develop students’ metacognitive proficiency without recognizing metacognition’s affective qualities are likely to be minimally effective.”

So what is that gift I mentioned earlier? It’s your end-of-semester evaluations, of course. There we ask students to evaluate and comment on whether the course objectives were specified and followed by the instructor, whether the instructor was an effective teacher, and whether the course was a valuable learning experience. These questions prompt students to think about their thinking in the course. Without prompting, students spontaneously also comment on their affect. And here come the gifts, some of them encouraging, pleasant, and precious as gold. Here are a few examples: I very much enjoyed the discussions and deeper exploration of the material. I felt that the papers pushed me to genuinely consider and critically evaluate the material in a way I may not have otherwise. Thank you for an enjoyable and thought-provoking seminar. This has been my favorite psychology class. The work assignments were challenging and (dare I say) fun.

But sometimes the gift can be a bit disconcerting. There was one unfortunate December when I unluckily received my course evaluations just before leaving on a family vacation to Las Vegas. I had gone through the semester thinking how wise I was and how well things were going. The students told me otherwise. Yes, they explained why I deserved those low ratings, so they had to think about their metacognitive experience – i.e., what it was like learning the material in my course and how they felt about the process. For a week, I was inconsolable. But the students had got my attention. I realized I had become too complacent. I had to think deeply about my thinking about how to organize and deliver the course. I had to engage in metacognitions about teaching. And it wasn’t just about thinking about the knowledge I had and they had (or had not). It was also about the affect – how I felt about the course, myself, and the students, in the context of those metacognitions.

That semester was a gift. Every semester is a gift. But we have to accept the gift for it to be meaningful and make a difference. So…all good tidings for the season – I mean, end of the semester.

References

Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34(10), 906-911. doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.34.10.906

Nuhfer, E. (2014). Self-assessment and the affective quality of metacognition: Part 1 of 2. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/self-assessment-and-the-affective-quality-of-metacognition-part-1-of-2/

Papaleontiou-Louca, E. (2008). Metacognition and theory of mind. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

 


Can Reciprocal Peer Tutoring Increase Metacognition in Your Students?

Aaron S. Richmond, Ph. D.

How many of you use collaborative learning in your classroom? If you do, do you specifically use it to increase metacognition in your students? If the answer is yes, you are likely building on the work of Hadwin, Jarvela, and Miller (2011) and Schraw, Crippen, and Hartley (2006). For those of you unfamiliar with collaborative learning, I tend to agree with Slavich and Zimbardo’s (2012) definition, in collaborative learning students “…tackle problems and question with peers—especially more knowledgeable peers—insofar as such experiences provide students with opportunities to learn new problem-solving strategies and to debate ideas in a way that challenges their understanding of concepts” (p. 572). There are many ways to use collaborative learning in the classroom, jigsaw classroom, paired annotations, send-a-problem, think-pair-share, three-step interview, peer tutoring, number heads, etc. Of particular interest, recent research on collaborative learning suggests that reciprocal peer tutoring may be particularly useful when your goal is to not only learn course material, but to increase your student’s metacognition (De Backer, Van Keer, Moerkerke, & Valcke, 2016).

In their innovative study, De Backer and colleagues (2016) investigated the effects of using reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT) to support and increase metacognitive regulation in higher education. De Backer and colleagues defined RPT as “the structured exchange of the tutor role among peers in groups/pairs…and enables each student to experience the specific benefits derived from providing and receiving academic guidance.” (p. 191) De Backer et al. had students, over a course of the semester, complete eight peer tutoring sessions. All students were trained to be a tutor,  experienced being a tutor, and tutored their peers at least twice. Tutoring sessions were 120 minutes in length and occurred outside of class. The tutor’s role was to manage the tutees and promote collaborative learning. During each tutoring session, the tutees were asked to solve a problem related to the class content. Each problem had three specific components:

(1) An outline of learning objectives to guide peers’ discussion to central course-related topics; (2) a subtask aimed at getting familiar with the theme-specific terminology; and (3) a subtask in which students were instructed to apply theoretical notions to realistic instructional cases. (De Backer et al., 2016, p. 193)

The problems presented, often did not have clear-cut answers and required considerable cognitive effort. De Backer et al. video recorded all the tutoring sessions and then scored each session on the amount and type of metacognitive regulation that occurred by both tutors and tutees. For example, they looked at the student’s ability to orient, plan, monitor, and evaluate. They also measured the level of processing (whether it was shallow or deep processing of metacognitive strategies). Appendix D of De Backer et al.’s article provided examples of how to code metacognitive data. See Table 1 for an example of the scoring (De Backer et al., 2016, p. 41). They then scored the frequency of metacognitive regulations that occurred per session.

Table 1. Examples of Lower and Deep Level Metacognitive Regulation in Reciprocal Peer Tutoring by De Backer et al. (2016, pp. 41-42)
Metacognition–Monitoring
Comprehension Monitoring Noting lack of comprehension T: “Does everyone understand the outlines of instructional behaviorism?”
t1: “I still don’t understand the concept of aptitude.”
Checking comprehension by repeating (LL) T: “Does everyone agree now that instructional behaviorism and instructional constructivism are opposites?”
t1: “I think (…) because in behaviorism the instructor decides on everything but constructivism is about learners being free to construct their own knowledge.:
t2: “Yes constructivist learners are much more independent and active, not so?”
Checking comprehension by elaborating (DL) T: “The behavioristic instructor permanently provides feedback. Who knows why?”
t1: “Is it not to make sure that learners don’t make mistakes?”
t2: “Could that also be the reason why they structure the learning materials extensively? And why they don’t like collaborative learning? Because collaborative learning requires

spontaneous discussions between students. You cannot really structure it in advance, not

so?”
Note. DL = Deep learning, LL = low or shallow learning, T = tutor, t1 and t2 = tutees.

De Backer and colleagues (2016) found that as the semester progressed, students engaged in more and more metacognitive regulatory processes. Specifically, their orientation increased, their monitoring increased and their evaluation increased (in general the frequency was 3 times greater at the end of the semester than at the beginning of the semester). However, planning stayed stagnant over the course of the semester. Specifically, the frequency of planning use continued to be low throughout the semester.  Far more interesting was that students (over the course of the semester) decreased their use of shallow or low-level metacognitive strategies and increased their use of deep-level metacognitive strategies as result. Increases in metacognitive regulation occurred across most types of metacognitive strategies (e.g., regulation, orientation, activating prior knowledge, task analysis, monitoring, and evaluation).

 As demonstrated by De Backer and colleagues study and the work of other researchers (e.g., King, 1997; De Backer, Van Keer, & Valcke, 2012), RPT and other collaborative learning instructional methods may be a useful in increasing metacognitive processes of students.

Concluding Thoughts and Questions for You

After reading De Backer et al. (2016), I was fascinated by the possible use of RPT in my own classroom. So, I started to think about how to implement it myself. Some questions arose that I thought you might help me with:

  1. How do I specifically scaffold the use of RPT in my classroom? More so, what does a successful RPT session resemble? Fortunately, De Backer and colleagues did provide an appendix to their study (Appendix C) that gives an example of what a tutoring session may look like.
  2. How many tutoring sessions is enough to increase the metacognition in my students? De Backer et al. had 8 sessions. This would be difficult for me to squeeze into my course planning. Would 3-4 be enough? What do you think? But then not all students could be a tutor. Do they get more (metacognitively) out of being a tutor vs. a tutee? This is something that De Backer and colleagues did not analyze. (Hint, hint all you folks—SoTL project in the making;)
  3. De Backer et al. briefly described that the tutors had a 10-page manual on how to be a tutor. Hmm…I don’t know if my students would be able to effectively learn from this. What other simple ways might we use to teach students how to be effective tutors in the context of RPT?
  4. Finally, are you do anything like De Backer et al.? And if so, do you think it is improving your student’s metacognitive regulation?

 References

De Backer, L., Van Keer, H., Moerkerke, B., & Valcke, M. (2016). Examining evolutions in the adoption of metacognitive regulation in reciprocal peer tutoring groups. Metacognition and Learning, 11, 187-213. doi:10.1007/s11409-015-9141-7

De Backer, L., Van Keer, H., & Valcke, M. (2012). Exploring the potential impact of reciprocal peer tutoring on higher education students’ metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation. Instructional Science, 40, 559–588.

Hadwin, A. F., Järvelä, S., & Miller, M. (2011). Self-regulated, co-regulated, and socially shared regulation of learning. In B. J. Zimmerman & D. H. Schunk (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance (pp. 65–84). New York: Routledge.

King, A. (1997). Ask to think-tell why©: A model to transactive peer tutoring for scaffolding higher level complex learning. Educational Psychologist, 32, 221–235.

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

Slavich, G. M., & Zimbardo, P. G. (2012). Transformational teaching: Theoretical underpinnings, basic principles, and core methods. Educational Psychology Review, 24, 569-608. doi:10.1007/s10648-012-9199-6


The GAMES Survey: A Tool to Scaffold Metacognitive Practices

by Lauren Scharff, U. S. Air Force Academy

As many of us educators know, an unfortunately large number of students, both at the K-12 and college-levels, do not give much thought to how and why they try to learn the way they do, much less demonstrate strong habits of metacognition. Talking in general about metacognition might garner some students’ interest, but without some concrete guidance on how to engage in behaviors that support metacognition, students are less likely to develop such practices.

Thus, I was pleased to rediscover the GAMES survey / self-assessment tool created by Marilla Svinicki when I was re-reading her excellent book, Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom, as part of a book group at my institution. GAMES stands for:

  • Goal-oriented studying
  • Active studying
  • Meaningful and memorable studying
  • Explain to understand
  • Self-monitor

For each component of the survey, there are five to ten behaviors for which students indicate their likelihood to perform using a 5-point scale ranging from “Never” to “Always.” These behaviors are distinct, tangible actions such as:

  • Analyze what I have to do before beginning to study. (Goal-oriented studying)
  • Ask myself questions before, during, and after studying. (Active studying)
  • Make connections between what I am studying and past classes or units. (Meaningful and memorable studying)
  • Discuss the course content with anyone willing to listen. (Explain to understand)
  • Keep track of things I don’t understand and note when they finally become clear and what made that happen. (Self-monitor)

Marilla suggests that the use of such an instrument can help students become more aware of the possibility of self-regulating their learning behaviors. This combination of awareness and self-regulation is key to metacognition, and is what is prompting this blog post.

Through the process of completing the GAMES survey, students are introduced to more than 30 specific behaviors that holistically will support metacognition about learning. Students can easily observe areas where they might show stronger or weaker engagement, and they can focus their efforts where they are weaker, using the list of specific, tangible behaviors as a scaffold to help them target their activity.

At my institution, the U. S. Air Force Academy, we plan to use the GAMES survey in a current Science of Learning workshop series for our students led by students. Most of the seminar attendees are students who are struggling academically, but we are advertising that, by “studying smarter, not only harder” students of all levels of academic achievement can improve their learning. We believe that the GAMES survey will help students target specific behaviors that have been shown to support deeper learning.

We are not the only institution that has seen value in disseminating the GAMES survey to students. For example, several years ago, Georgia Tech encouraged its use across all sections of their first-year seminar. Importantly, they didn’t simply ask students to complete the survey and that was it. They encouraged instructors to help students use the results in a meaningful way, such as by picking a weak behavior and striving to improve it over a 2-week time period, or by having students journal about changes they made and how those changes seemed to impact their academic performance.

This survey tool is appropriate across the disciplines and only takes a few minutes for students to complete. Its use and a short follow-on activity to encourage meaningful application would not add great burden to a faculty member or take much time from normal course activities. But, the pay-off could be large for individual students, both in that course as well as others if they transfer the principles into new contexts. It’s definitely worth a try!

——————

Svinicki, M. D. (2004). Learning and motivation in the postsecondary classroom. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Co.

If you do not have access to Marilla Svinicki’s book, you can read a short online overview of GAMES on the Association for Psychological Science website (2006), and obtain a pdf copy of the survey online.