Month: April 2024

Practical Magic: Using Metacognition to Connect DEI Work and the Writing Center

by Gina Evers, M.F.A., Director of the Writing Center and First-Year Experience Coordinator

Metacognition as Recursion

One of my refrains as a writing teacher is “everything is connected, and it’s your job to figure out how.” Of course, the process of identifying connections between seemingly disparate ideas is a metacognitive one: writers must cultivate an awareness of how they think about a particular concept in order to think about it differently. And through this reconsideration, this intellectual quest to discover parallels, translations, or evolutions among ideas, new meanings are made and beautiful thesis statements are born!

While the process of birthing knowledge from chaos may seem magical, composition scholars have articulated it in many articles defining the writing process as recursive rather than linear. My favorite definition of recursion, because it is both practical and magical, comes from the work of Sondra Perl (1980/2008). In order to write recursively, Perl advises us to engage in three tasks. The first she terms “retrospective structuring,” or a looking back to what a writer has already written while reconciling it with their present thoughts and compositions (p. 145). Perl names the second task “projective structuring,” or a looking forward to predict the responses and questions of readers (p. 146). Again, writers use those anticipations to inform how they compose in the present. And here comes the magic: “felt sense,” a term (Perl attributes to philosopher Eugene Gendlin) and uses to describe a writer’s intuition about what feels right to them (p. 142). Perl argues that engaging in felt sense is crucial for both effective retrospective and projective structuring.

I argue metacognition is at the heart of felt sense; metacognition is the practical key needed to unlock the magic of that writerly intuition. And because that writerly intuition is crucial for recursive writing and thinking, engaging in metacognition is a recursive process while, likewise, writing recursively is inherently metacognitive. These theoretical connections became clear to me throughout my Writing Center work in the Spring 2022 semester, when I focused my tutor training program on anti-racist tutoring practices.

Connecting the Writing Center to DEI Work: A Beginning

To open our first staff meeting that focused on anti-racist tutoring, I asked my undergraduate writing tutors to compose and share a six-word memoir describing the first time they became aware of race. Here is mine:

  • I wanted braids; Mom said no.

And here are two from my team:

  • Middle school history class.
  • No one else looked like me.

The first and third memoir show personal confrontations with difference, while the second shows a more removed interaction, where difference is explained in an academic setting. This diversity is relevant as we consider how we think about our roles as educators with a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Each student brings with them distinct personal and academic histories of race and racism, and those histories take up space in our classrooms — even if we do not see or acknowledge them.

Examining this writing activity through the lens of a recursive metacognition / a metacognitive recursion, we see that in the present moment of the staff meeting, tutors were asked to look back to their earliest memories of learning race (retrospective structuring). For me as the educator, learning about the background knowledge of my students allowed me to look forward and tailor the forthcoming activities and lessons to the needs of my specific audience (projective structuring). The felt sense – what I argue is actually recursive metacognition / metacognitive recursion – then emerged through our sharing and discussion. In conversation, we reconciled those early learnings of race with what we know now.

Seeing the Metacognitive Recursion in my Own Process

The six-word memoir activity came from “Talking Justice: The Role of Antiracism in the Writing Center” (2019) – a piece of scholarship authored by peer writing consultants at Oklahoma State University. In it, the authors describe the six-word memoir as a part of the anti-racist training they created for writing center staff at OSU. The authors articulate three goals of their training:

  1. Cultivate a “willingness to be disturbed,” to disrupt our own individual ways of thinking and being that have continued systemic racism, which demands “a tireless investment in reflection, openness, and hope for a better, more fulfilling future for us all” (Diab et al. 20).
  2. Create (brave) spaces where people are able to discuss issues and concerns surrounding race and racism with a willingness to be wrong, to call out with compassion, and to seek mutual understanding.
  3. Enact mindful inclusion practices that support diverse writers and resist the writing center’s historical role in gatekeeping and assimilating for academic institutions. (Coenen et al., 2019, p. 14)

Looking Back

These goals – then and now – strike me as particularly metacognitive. The intentional awareness that engaging in anti-racist training will cause disturbance demonstrates a tutor’s willingness to take risks in their thinking and learning. Similarly, creating space for conversation within this plane of disturbance and “mindfully … resist[ing] the writing center’s historical role [of] assimilating” students into the academy both demonstrate contemplation about the ways of knowing we have all participated in.     

Looking Forward

In order to honor Coenen et al’s goals in my own tutor training, I concluded my first staff meeting that focused on anti-racist tutoring by asking tutors to anonymously contribute to a staff Padlet. On it, they described ways a writing center – any writing center – could participate in, support, or condone racism. After doing this work, my tutors then contributed to a working document that listed ways our Mount Saint Mary College Writing Center could combat racism and resist complicity with racism.

Recursive Metacognition and Anti-racist Tutor Training

But what of Perl’s magical ingredient? Where does felt sense – recursive metacognition – appear in my facilitation of this first anti-racist tutor training? I knew my tutors needed a structure, so I adapted the six-word memoir activity. I knew my tutors needed to feel empowered with agency to create change, so I chose an article authored by their contemporaries: other peer tutors. I knew my tutors needed to understand how a writing center could contribute to institutional racism without blaming or shaming their tutoring practices, so I created an anonymous Padlet as a forum for this conversation. I knew my tutors needed to be included in creating solutions to correcting racial injustice on campus, so I allowed them to generate a list of action steps we could take as a Writing Center and helped us achieve them.

This knowing I am describing is more than an intuition, a “felt sense”: it is metacognitive awareness I have cultivated as an educator. And put into recursive practice, metacognition becomes a mighty pedagogical tool that can unlock thinking and writing processes for students and educators alike.

References

Coenen, H., Folarin, F., Tinsley, N., & Wright, L. (2019). Talking justice: The role of antiracism in the writing center. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 16(2), 12-19.

Perl, S. (2008). Understanding composing. In T. R. Johnson (Ed.), Teaching Composition: Background Readings (pp.140-148). Bedford/St. Martin’s. (Reprinted from “Understanding composing,” 1980, College Composition and Communication, 31[4], 363-369, https://doi.org/10.2307/356586).


Engendering Empathy through Literature with Metacognition

by Dr. Marie-Therese C. Sulit, Professor of English and Director of the Honors Program

“Literature is no one’s private ground. It is common ground.”–Virginia Woolf

“Doce me veritatem”/“Teach Me Truth”—Motto of Mount Saint Mary College

INTRODUCTION: CONSIDERING DISPUTATIO A FORM OF METACOGNITION

As a multicultural practitioner of literature, I draw upon both a contemplative-informed pedagogy to create safe and brave spaces, especially for young adults. Given the common ground that literature provides, it is important that participants feel safe so they can be brave and share with the class. I connect literacy with literature through the reading process as follows:

  • Basic Literacy, or Reading the Lines: discerning the basic plot of a story on your terms (based on our personal experiences and responses) and articulating the “who, what, when, and where” of that story in our speech and prose
  • Critical Literacy, or Critically Reading between the Lines: discerning the deeper meaning of the story on its terms and articulating the “how and why” of that story through the background of the story itself and our present historical, literary, and political moment
  • Multicultural Literacy, or Reading Critically against the Lines: discerning the gaps and omissions of that story on its and our own terms and articulating ways of filling in these gaps and omissions by posing alternative readings

At any stage of the reading process, a student’s engagement with the narrative text can move between emotional reactions and intellectual responses. In an essay, “Reflection Matters: Using Metacognition to Track a Moving Target,” I highlight contemplative pedagogy, which creates a space between one’s emotional reactions and one’s intellectual responses. These reactions and responses inform students’ engagement with literature—may it be a series of spoken or written remarks, difficult and challenging topics, or an emergent potentially controversial set of themes—that, through metacognition, can shift triggers (emotional reactions) into glimmers (intellectual responses) in classroom discussions.

In another essay, “Identity Matters: Creating Brave Spaces through Disputatio and Discernment,” I discuss disputatio, a contemplative practice of rigorous argumentation particular to Dominican colleges and universities, as “[a] method that seeks to resolve difficult questions and controverted issues by finding the truth in each.” The practice of disputatio requires discernment as a means by which multiple and/or disparate perspectives can be brought to light even as it addresses “urgent questions of justice and peace.” At the Mount, pedagogical practices across disciplines are being called upon to explore and investigate so-called “controversial” issues that run the gamut of the “-isms,” e.g. racism and sexism and other forms of oppression. As a teacher of literature, the discernment intrinsic to disputatio, I believe, is a form of metacognition that can be utilized in the classroom in order to gauge students’ connection to a narrative text and peers as well as themselves. There is no better time than the present to engender empathy, the understanding of another perspective, with metacognition to address these opportunities for change in the classroom. Thus, the engenderment of empathy cannot happen without metacognition.

ENGENDERING EMPATHY THROUGH LITERATURE WITH METACOGNITION

The study and analysis of literature not only brings self-examination for all involved as we move through stories, characters, conflicts, and resolutions but also an examination of history, culture and society. In Literature for Young Adults, for example, the relatability of a narrative text opens up the opportunity for young adults to engage in this process of self-examination through the examination of a piece of literature. In providing the common ground to engender empathy, its challenge lies in its inherent predication that another’s experience of pain, even trauma, cannot be our own, and this challenge can happen within a student, among the students in the class, as well as through the characters. In applying these challenges to literature, I draw upon Lou Agosta (2020) who problematizes one’s ability to be open to another, be it a student with another student and/or a student with a character:

  • RECEPTIVITY, an emotional contagion, happening through an appropriation of one’s experience;
  • INTERPRETATION, as projecting one’s experience onto another, be it a character or a peer can happen;
  • RESPONSE, as becoming lost in translation, where gossiping, talking about, or changing the subject can happen;
  • UNDERSTANDING, where the labelling or categorizing one’s experience can happen.

With Agosta’s four points, the stages of the reading process are akin to listening: students react and respond accordingly, gauging their reactions and responses. He emphasizes that it is one’s ability to truly listen where empathy can either break down and/or break through. Agosta delineates how empathy works:

  • EMPATHIC RECEPTIVITY: a gracious and generous listening
  • EMPATHIC INTERPRETATION: the view from “over there”
  • EMPATHIC RESPONSIVENESS: the “film” of one’s life—be it a character, a peer, and/or one’s self
  • EMPATHIC UNDERSTANDING: a break-through, rather than a break-down, to possibility—be it literary, personal, and/or communal

In this course, the students and I discussed a student-selected contemporary novel, Girl in Pieces (2016) written by Kathleen Glasgow. In this controversial novel, the protagonist is a young woman, Charlie, homeless and a self-harmer, who, through her fraught relationships with family and friends, journeys towards self-development and self-discovery. Charlie served as a surrogate for the students who, to varying degrees, identify and dis-identify with aspects of this protagonist. I find myself most successful in engendering empathy and having the students develop their metacognition through low-stakes writing assignments—e.g. paragraph experiments for practice in writing effective paragraphs and online discussion forums that allow for reflection in responding to topics raised in the classroom. Examples include Charlie’s struggle to not self-harm, her choice in lovers, and her decision to move from place to place. High-stakes writing assignments, like short response papers, allow for deeper reflection on topics initially expressed in the paragraph experiments and online discussion forums. Examples include discussing aspects of a toxic relationship, the role of art in her coping strategies and healing practices, the plight of homeless teenagers. Students are compelled to choose between an approach to their literary studies that emphasizes participation, which can be challenging yet rewarding when students are still learning how they learn best and why they seek to learn. All of this cannot happen without the development of their metacognition through these classroom discussions and writing exercises.

Working through this novel with the students necessitated metacognitive exercises in exploring the creative, emotional, and intellectual that enabled some students to turn triggers into glimmers and other students to engender empathy for the characters and their peers who felt safe and brave enough to share their vulnerabilities. By studying and analyzing Charlie, her choices, her outcome, we became a rich and enriched community.

CONCLUSION

Through literature, I find that diversifying the course content and ensuring an inclusive pedagogy presents the opportunity for instilling students with a sense of curiosity through the process of exploration and discovery—one that comes with their self-development. For students to become life-long learners seeking truth, we bear the responsibility for the cultivation of statements, actions, behaviors, and practices that bespeaks a fully realized human being. We can and must continue to assist students in the development of new ways of being in this world as it is.

WORKS CITED

Agosta, L. (2020, September 6). Retrieved from Empathy Lessons: https://empathyinthecontextofphilosophy.com/2020/09/06/the-trouble-with-the-trouble-with-empathy/

The Dominican Charism in American Higher Education: A Vision in Service of Truth. Dominican University.     2012.

Woolf, Virginia. “Leaning Tower.” The Moment and Other Essays. HMH Books, 2003.


Being humble with a little help from metacognition

By John Draeger, PhD  (SUNY Buffalo State)

As a political philosopher, I worry about our deeply divided world and the need to find the wherewithal to interact with those with whom we disagree. I am interested in the role humility plays in civil discourse. I argue that being humble, or being aware that we don’t have all the answers, can open the door to more respectful dealings with others and offer the prospect of more productive dialogue. Being humble isn’t easy, but metacognition can help us stay on track. It can, for example, encourage us to check-in on whether we’re actually listening to what others have to say or lapsing into dismissive name-calling.

Metacognition focuses attention on a process in hopes of evaluating what’s working, what’s not, and what needs adjusting. In this case, metacognition can help us check-in on the process of being humble. If humility involves understanding the ways we can be prone to bias, prejudice, and blind spots, then metacognition can help us identify those times when we lapse into those errors and make the appropriate adjustments. This post explores the relationship between metacognition and humility.

Humility

There’s a long tradition in philosophy on character traits, such as humility, that promote good living. However, I’ve recently become interested in the work of social psychologist Daryl Van Tongeren (2022). If you’ve come across the vast literature on problematic ways of thinking (such as bias, self-deception, and blind spots) and wondered how to avoid such things, then scholars like Van Tongeren are exploring humility as a potential answer.

Van Tongeren highlights the fact that humble people are open to what they don’t know. They learn to tolerate uncertainty and they are on the lookout for times when they are in the grips of illusory (or mistaken) forms of thinking. They also accepts their own strengths. Humility, as an approach to the world, prompts us to look inwards to assess what we might be missing instead of quickly concluding that someone else is wrong, foolish, or worse.

Without humility, relationships can degenerate into people selfishly putting their own needs over others, being insecure and distrustful, and being toxically defensive at the mere whiff of feedback. Humility, in contrast, invites a spirit of openness to change, to feedback, and to the perspectives of others. This offers the prospect of more authentic relationships and greater satisfaction.

An illustration: Road trip anyone?

Suppose you and I are going on a road trip. I happen to be driving and you happen to notice that we seem to be turned around. Humility would nudge me to at least consider that I’m driving in the wrong direction, especially when the GPS, the map, the road signs, and even the sun confirm that we are off course. If humble, then I might respond with a “yup, my bad. Where’s the best place to turn around?” If not, then I might get defensive by questioning the authority of the map, appealing to some “special shortcut” that only I know about, angrily changing the topic of conversation, and then silently (though stubbornly) driving on. If we find ourselves in this situation, then humility, as a process of openness towards the world, has broken down. Enter metacognition.

Metacognition can prompt me to check-in on my process (humility). Why am I behaving this way? Am I being defensive because I am embarrassed? Am I annoyed because I didn’t want to take the trip anyway? Am I flummoxed because I want the trip to go perfectly and I fear that I’ve messed things up? Or am I frustrated because my bad back is acting up and I am so uncomfortable that I can’t think straight or manage anything going wrong? Metacognition reminds me to check-in on whether I’m being open to evidence or being hijacked by some other factor. Once alerted, I can recommit to humility and adjust my course.

More generally, metacognition can prompt me to notice that I tend to be open to criticisms about my cooking (because my identity is not tied up with it) and those offered by my close friends (because I trust their judgment). However, feedback from certain family members and any feedback about my teaching has the tendency to put me on edge. In these cases, metacognition can alert me to those contexts where I’m more likely to be humble and those where I’m more likely to be closed.

Making the connection: Humility and metacognition

Neither humility nor metacognition can guarantee good thinking, good feeling, or good action (whatever that means). But humility reminds us to be open to our own foibles and open to the ways we often miss the mark. Metacognition encourages us to check-in on our humility and become aware of how we might get back on track.

Applied to civil discourse, neither humility nor metacognition can solve contentious disagreements in a polarized political environment, but they can help set the stage for progress. A willingness to check-in on why and how we think, feel, and act as we do can position us for dialogue with those with whom we deeply disagree (even those who question our most cherished beliefs about god or human rights). Humility, for example, encourages us to appreciate the points of view of those with whom we disagree and suspend judgment until the evidence is in. Van Tongeren argues that humble people recognize that it is not all about us. Other people know things that we don’t. Others bring experiences to the table that can be hard for us to imagine. Humility holds space for those possibilities. Metacognition reminds us to check-in on our presence in that space. If we’re not there, then an adjustment is in order.

References

Van Tongeren, D. (2022). Humble: Free yourself from the traps of a narcissistic world. The Experiment.