Meta-Teaching: Improve Your Teaching While Improving Students’ Metacognition

By Aaron S. Richmond, Metropolitan State University of Denver

To-date, many of the wonderful blogs posted on Improve with Metacognition have aptly focused on metacognition itself. They varied from classroom exercises to improve student metacognition (see Westmoreland, 2014) to increasing higher level thinking through metacognitive practices (see Nuhfer, 2014) to the merits of measuring metacognition (Was, 2014). Not yet covered is that of the secondary purpose of this website. That is, the emphasis will be the process of teaching about metacognition and teaching metacognitively. As such, there is great potential and room discourse on meta-teaching or meta-pedagogy as a way to both improve student learning of metacognition and our own teaching practices.

Yet first, it is important to begin with a solid operational definition of meta-teaching. As Chen (2013) states,

Like meta-cognition and meta-learning, meta-teaching, as ‘teaching about teaching’, can serve to design, examine and reflect on teaching. From practice-orientation, it defines what teaching activity is and what it is for, under which theoretical framework it is being carried out, and what experience and rules can be applied to it. Meanwhile, meta-teaching can assist teachers in discovering drawbacks in the teaching system and solving problems. This demonstrates that meta-teaching contains such functions such as understanding teaching, changing teaching and reflecting on teaching. (p. S64)

Therefore, by using this definition, how can we first improve our teaching using meta-teaching practices? And second, how can we use meta-teaching to specifically improve our teaching of metacognitive theory and the metacognition of our students?

Why Engage in Meta-Teaching Practices?

Drawn from the literature on meta-teaching, there are several benefits and reasons why college professors should employ meta-teaching practices. First, and foremost it promotes student learning (Chen, 2013). When teachers reflect and evaluate whether their teaching methods actually have an impact on student learning and adjust their practices accordingly, inevitably student learning and performance improves. Second, meta-teaching can invigorate and create a passion for teaching. In that, engaging in this process has been found to increase teacher’s love for the profession (Chen, 2013). Moreover, Chen states, “When the teacher takes action, he/she begins to observe and reflect on the action, impelling him/her to stay highly conscious of what he/she is doing….Without meta-teaching action, a teacher would hardly keep his /her motivation and enthusiasm for better teaching.” (p. S69) Finally, meta-teaching promotes the teaching profession through formal and informal scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). That is, SoTL cannot be conducted without proper meta-teaching practices.

Meta-Teaching Strategies Used to Improve Metacognition

Plan, strategy, monitor, and evaluate. Spring (1985) suggests that teachers should use meta-teaching strategies by properly planning lessons, critically reflecting on appropriate instructional strategies/methods to obtain instructional goals, monitor student learning, and evaluate the efficacy of the strategy. For example, in a recent study I conducted (Richmond, in press), I used meta-teaching strategies to improve pre-service education students’ knowledge of various learning strategies. See Table 1 for an illustrative example of how I employed the meta-teaching strategies of planning, instructional strategy, student monitoring, and evaluation to improve my teaching and increase my student’s knowledge of metacognitive theory (e.g., learning strategies).

Table 1. Example of Implementing Meta-Teaching to Teach Learning Strategies
Meta-Teaching Strategy	Richmond’s (in press) Educational PsychologyClassroom Example
Planning and Goals	Increase both higher and lower level learning of the learning strategies of rehearsal, organization, elaboration, spacing vs. massed practice, and distributed practice. Increase retention of the knowledge of learning strategies. Attempt to assist students in transferring these strategies to their own learning.
Instructional Strategy	Used Active learning (e.g., small group discussion, experimentation, elaboration) vs. direct instruction (e.g., lecture) to teach about learning strategies.
Monitoring Student Learning	Formally assessed prior knowledge of student’s understanding of learning strategies. Formally assessed immediate retention of knowledge of learning strategies. Formally assessed long-term retention (4-weeks) of knowledge of learning strategies. Informally assessed (e.g., why questions and a 1-minute written assessment) progress of learning about learning strategies during class.
Evaluation	Analyzed which instructional method was most effective and found that only active learning instruction increased higher-level learning. Found that students were unable to transfer strategies. Found that students taught with active learning instruction retained more information over time.

Encourage metacognition in students. Not only can teachers use meta-teaching strategies to improve their own teaching, student learning, and to teach about metacognition, they can also model and encourage metacognitive thinking in their students. Similar to that of meta-teaching strategies, Chen suggests students should set a plan/goal for learning, develop a strategy to achieve this goal, monitor the progress of the given strategy, and finally evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy. Moreover, when teachers effectively use meta-teaching strategies they explain the reasoning behind specific pedagogical practices (e.g., formal and informal assessments, specific teaching strategies, assignments, etc.) and they explain the successes and failures of meta-teaching strategies (Chen, 2013). This process may model metacognitive practices to students. Additionally, Chen argues that teachers using meta-teaching strategies (no matter the content domain) always specifically infuse and teach metacognitive strategies to students.

Closing Meta-Remarks

I believe that many exemplar teachers inherently use meta-teaching strategies. However, for the rest of us, it is extremely important to investigate and learn how to improve our teaching through these practices. Additionally, when we convey the process to our students we are modeling metacognitive processes to students, which they too can use to improve their learning and performance in whatever endeavor they so choose.

References

Chen, X. (2013). Meta-teaching: Meaning and Strategy. Africa Education Review, 10(1), S63-S74. doi:10.1080/18146627.2013.855431

Nuhfer, E. (2104). Metacognition for guiding students to awareness of higher-level thinking (part 2). Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/metacognition-for-guiding-students-to-awareness-of-higher-level-thinking-part-2/

Richmond, A. S. (in press). Teaching learning strategies to pre-service educators: Practice what we preach! In M. C. Smith, & N. DeFrates-Densch (Eds.). Challenges and innovations in educational psychology teaching and learning. Hersey, PA: IGI Global.

Spring, H. T. (1985). Teacher decision making: A metacognitive approach. The Reading Teacher, 290-295.

Was, C. (2014). Are current metacognition measures missing the target? Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/are-current-metacognition-measures-missing-the-target/

Westmoreland, D. (2014). Science and social controversy – A classroom exercise in metacognition. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/science-and-social-controversy-a-classroom-exercise-in-metacognition/

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