Author: Art Costa

Do Your Questions Invite Metacognition?

By Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick, Co-founders, International Institute for Habits of Mind

Our ‘inner voice’ is what we use to reflect on what we do, how and why we behave in the way we do, how we critique ourselves and how we connect the knowledge, ideas, concepts and concept frameworks developed using each of our four learning systems. It is the voice that challenges us to strive further and the voice that condemns our foolishness.

Mark Treadwell, Learning: How the Brain Learns (2014)

One of a teacher’s most important practices is designing and posing questions.   Wise teachers pose questions consciously with deliberate intentions. They know that questions engage sometimes subtle and overt responses from students.   Questions are the powerful stimuli that evoke cognitive, behavioral and emotional responses in students. They initiate a journey in the mind. Indeed questions are the backbone of instruction. They must be employed with care (Costa & Kallick, 2008).

Building a Thinking Vocabulary

Because thinking words may not be used in students’ homes or in previous classrooms, thinking vocabulary may be a “foreign language” to them. They may not know how to perform the specific thinking skills that a given term implies. It is imperative, therefore, that students develop a vocabulary with which to express their metacognitive processes.

When adults speak usiing mindful language, using specific, cognitive terminology and instructing students in ways to perform certain skills, students are more inclined to be able to both name and use those skills. For example,

Instead of saying: Use Metacognitive language by saying:
“Let’s look at these two pictures.” “As you COMPARE these two pictures…”
“What do you think will happen when . . . ?” “What do you PREDICT will happen when . . . ?”
“How can you put those into groups?” “How might you CLASSIFY . . . ?”
“Let’s work this problem.” “Let’s ANALYZE this problem.”
“What do you think would have happened if… ?” “What do you SPECULATE would have happened if… ?”
“What did you think of this story?” “What CONCLUSIONS can you draw about this story?”
“How can you explain . . . ?” “What HYPOTHESES do you have that might explain . . . ?”
“How do you know that’s true?” “What EVIDENCE do you have to sup-port . . . ?”
“How else could you use this . . . ?” “How could you APPLY this . . . ?”
“Do you think that is the best alternative? “As you EVALUATE these alternatives….”

As students hear these cognitive terms in everyday use and experience the cognitive processes that accompany these labels, they internalize the words and use them as part of their own  metacognitive vocabulary. Teachers will also want to give specific instruction and provide awareness of experiences so that students recognize and know the meaning of the terminology.

Invite metacognitive responses.

Teachers can deliberately invite students to become spectators of their own thinking by posing questions that invite a metacognitive response. Some questions invite a behavioral response, others can invite a thought-full response. Notice how behavioral questions can be transformed into questions that invite thinking:

Questions That Invite a Behavioral Response Questions That Invite Metacognitive Responses
“Why did you do that?” “What were you thinking when you did that?”
“What did the author mean when . . . ?” “What cues were you aware of?”
“What are your plans for . . . ?” “As you envision . . . what might be…..”
“When will you start . . . ?” “How will you decide when to start . . ?”
“Was that a good choice?” “What criteria did you have in mind to make that choice?”

If teachers pose questions that deliberately engage students’ cognitive processing, and let students know why the questions are being posed in this way, it is more likely that students will become aware of and engage their own metacognitive processes.

Making Internal Dialogue External

Students can become spectators of their own thinking when they are invited to monitor and make explicit the internal dialogue that accompanies their thinking.

They reveal their own thinking as they consider questions such as:

  • “What was going on in your head when……?”
  • “What were the benefits of……?”
  • “As you evaluate the effects of . . . ?”
  • “By what criteria are you judging…..?”
  • “What will you be aware of next time?”
  • “What did you hear yourself saying inside your brain when you were tempted talk but your job was to listen?”

Keep Students Thinking About Their Thinking

While such questions will initiate students’ metacognitive journey, you will also want to sustain that momentum by:

Causing Students to Monitor their Accuracy

  • “How do you know you are right?”
  • “What other ways can you prove that you are correct?

Pausing and Clarifying but not Interrupting

  • “Explain what you mean when you said you ‘just figured it out'”.
  •  “When you said you started at the beginning, how did you know                                where to begin?”

Providing Data, Not Answers (As soon as you confirm that an answer is correct, there is no need to think further about it!)

  • “I think you heard it wrong; let me repeat the question………………”
  • “You need to check your addition.”

Resisting Making Value Judgments Or Agreeing With Students’                  Answers.

  • “So, your answer is 48. Who came up with a different answer?”
  • “That’s one possibility. Who solved it another way?”

Remaining Focused On Thinking Processes

  • “Tell us what strategies you used to solve the problem”
  • “What steps did you take in your solution?”
  • “What was going on inside your head as you solved the problem?”

Encouraging Persistence

  • “Success! You completed step one. Now you’re ready to forge ahead.”
  • “C’mon, you can do it” Try it again!”

Ultimately, the intent of all this is to have students monitor and pose their own questions that promote thinking in themselves and others. Questioning, monitoring and reflecting on our experiences are requisites for becoming a continuous, lifelong learner. When we teach students to think about their thinking, we help make the world a more thought-full place.

References

Costa, A & Kallick, B. (2008) Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Characteristics for Success. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

Treadwell, M (2014) Learning: How the brain learns. www.MarkTreadwell.com/products


Metacognition: What Makes Humans Unique

by

Arthur L. Costa, Professor Emeritus, California State University, Sacramento

And

Bena Kallick, Educational Consultant, Westport, CT

————–

 

“I cannot always control what goes on outside.But I can always control what goes on inside.”  Wayne Dyer

————–

Try to solve this problem in your head:

How much is one half of two plus two?

Did you hear yourself talking to yourself? Did you find yourself having to decide if you should take one half of the first two (which would give the answer, three) or if you should sum the two’s first (which would give the answer, two)?

If you caught yourself having an “inner” dialogue inside your brain, and if you had to stop to evaluate your own decision making/problem-solving processes, you were experiencing metacognition.

The human species is known as Homo sapiens, sapiens, which basically means “a being that knows their knowing” (or maybe it is “knows they are knowing”). What distinguishes humans from other forms of life is our capacity for metacognition—the ability to be a spectator of own thoughts while we engage in them.

Occurring in the neocortex and therefore thought by some neurologists to be uniquely human, metacognition is our ability to know what we know and what we don’t know. It is our ability to plan a strategy for producing what information is needed, to be conscious of our own steps and strategies during the act of problem solving, and to reflect on and evaluate the productiveness of our own thinking. While “inner language,” thought to be a prerequisite, begins in most children around age five, metacognition is a key attribute of formal thought flowering about age eleven.

Interestingly, not all humans achieve the level of formal operations (Chiabetta, 1976). And as Alexander Luria, the Russian psychologist found, not all adults metacogitate.

Some adults follow instructions or perform tasks without wondering why they are doing what they are doing. They seldom question themselves about their own learning strategies or evaluate the efficiency of their own performance. They virtually have no idea of what they should do when they confront a problem and are often unable to explain their strategies of decision making, There is much evidence, however, to demonstrate that those who perform well on complex cognitive tasks, who are flexible and persevere in problem solving, who consciously apply their intellectual skills, are those who possess well-developed metacognitive abilities. They are those who “manage” their intellectual resources well: 1) their basic perceptual-motor skills; 2) their language, beliefs, knowledge of content, and memory processes; and 3) their purposeful and voluntary strategies intended to achieve a desired outcome; 4) self-knowledge about one’s own leaning styles and how to allocate resources accordingly.

When confronted with a problem to solve, we develop a plan of action, we maintain that plan in mind over a period of time, and then we reflect on and evaluate the plan upon its completion. Planning a strategy before embarking on a course of action helps us keep track of the steps in the sequence of planned behavior at the conscious awareness level for the duration of the activity. It facilitates making temporal and comparative judgments; assessing the readiness for more or different activities; and monitoring our interpretations, perceptions, decisions, and behaviors. Rigney (1980) identified the following self-monitoring skills as necessary for successful performance on intellectual tasks:

  • Keeping one’s place in a long sequence of operations;
  • Knowing that a subgoal has been obtained; and
  • Detecting errors and recovering from those errors either by making a quick fix or by retreating to the last known correct operation.

Such monitoring involves both “looking ahead” and “looking back.” Looking ahead includes:

  • Learning the structure of a sequence of operations;
  • Identifying areas where errors are likely;
  • Choosing a strategy that will reduce the possibility of error and will provide easy recovery; and
  • Identifying the kinds of feedback that will be available at various points, and evaluating the usefulness of that feedback.

Looking back includes:

  • Detecting errors previously made;
  • Keeping a history of what has been done to the present and thereby what should come next; and
  • Assessing the reasonableness of the present immediate outcome of task performance.

A simple example of this might be drawn from reading. While reading a passage have you ever had your mind “wander” from the pages? You “see” the words but no meaning is being produced. Suddenly you realize that you are not concentrating and that you’ve lost contact with the meaning of the text. You “recover” by returning to the passage to find your place, matching it with the last thought you can remember, and, once having found it, reading on with connectedness.

Effective thinkers plan for, reflect on, and evaluate the quality of their own thinking skills and strategies. Metacognition means becoming increasingly aware of one’s actions and the effects of those actions on others and on the environment; forming internal questions in the search for information and meaning; developing mental maps or plans of action; mentally rehearsing before a performance; monitoring plans as they are employed (being conscious of the need for midcourse correction if the plan is not meeting expectations); reflecting on the completed plan for self- evaluation; and editing mental pictures for improved performance.

This inner awareness and the strategy of recovery are components of metacognition. Indicators that we are becoming more aware of our own thinking include:

  • Are you able to describe what goes on in your head when you are thinking?
  • When asked, can you list the steps and tell where you are in the sequence of a problem-solving strategy?
  • Can you trace the pathways and dead ends you took on the road to a problem solution?
  • Can you describe what data are lacking and your plans for producing those data?

When students are metacognitive, we should see them persevering more when the solution to a problem is not immediately apparent. This means that they have systematic methods of analyzing a problem, knowing ways to begin, knowing what steps must be performed and when they are accurate or are in error. We should see students taking more pride in their efforts, becoming self-correcting, striving for craftsmanship and accuracy in their products, and becoming more autonomous in their problem-solving abilities.

Metacognition is an attribute of the “educated intellect.” Learning to think about their thinking can be a powerful tool in shaping, improving, internalizing and habituating their thinking.

REFERENCES

Chiabetta, E. L. A. (1976). Review of piagetian studies relevant to science instruction at the secondary and college level. Science Education, 60, 253-261.

Costa, A. and Kallick B.(2008). Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Characteristics for Success. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

Rigney, J. W. (1980). Cognitive learning strategies and qualities in information processing. In R. Snow, P. Federico & W. Montague (Eds.), Aptitudes, Learning, and Instruction, Volume 1. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.