by Arthur L. Costa, Ed. D. (Professor Emeritus, California State University, Sacramento). This paper summarizes 16 attributes of what human beings do when they behave intelligently, referred to as Habits of Mind. Metacognition is the 5th mentioned (see a nice summary of all 16 on the final page). Dr. Costa points out that these “Habits of Mind transcend all subject matters commonly taught in school. They are characteristic of peak performers whether they are in homes, schools, athletic fields,organizations, the military, governments, churches or corporations.”
Author: Lauren Scharff
Parallels: Instructors’ Metacognition Practices and their Mindsets
by Lauren Scharff, U. S. Air Force Academy
A week ago my institution held our annual Outstanding Educator’s Award Ceremony, at which the Chancellor of the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs, Dr. Pamela S. Shockley-Zalabak, gave the keynote address. Her presentation was engaging and right on target for the event. It helped honor the winners of the awards, and at the same time it was applicable to all the other faculty members who were in attendance. But what is prompting this blog piece is the parallel I found between her points about instructor mindset and our efforts to explore and develop metacognitive instruction (check out our Phase I research project summary).
As many of you are likely aware, and as cited by Dr. Shockley-Zalabak, Dr. Carol Dweck has led the research on the concept of mindset with respect to how it might impact educational (and many other) behaviors. She found evidence for two types of mindset: fixed and growth. Individuals who show a fixed mindset believe that characteristics such as scholastic ability, leadership potential, and speaking skills are innate rather than developable. In contrast, individuals with a growth mindset believe that such characteristics can be developed, and they seek opportunities to do so. These mindsets impact the likelihood that individuals will seek out challenging experiences (growth mindset) as opposed to seeking out experiences that will reinforce their current level of skill and avoid failure (fixed mindset). (Here is a nice review of Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.)
Typically, research on mindset and efforts to shift mindsets from fixed to growth are focused on students. For example, see the nice review and developmental activity shared in Charity Peak’s blog post from February of this year. This emphasis on student mindset is similar to the emphasis on student rather than instructor metacognitive practices. While a student focus is extremely important (ultimately students are the target population of our educational efforts), we shouldn’t neglect to acknowledge, study, and develop instructors with respect to their mindset (and their metacognitive practices).
Dr. Shockley-Zalabak’s keynote presentation pointed out that attending to instructor mindset, and not just student mindset, is key to creating great educational climates. Once you think about instructor mindset, the implications become obvious. Instructor mindset can have large influences on student learning because mindset can impact instructor expectations about their students’ abilities and about their own teaching ability.
Instructors with fixed mindsets tend to believe that students either are or are not capable within their discipline. It’s not hard to imagine that students in such a teacher’s course might not thrive unless they showed early promise and were tagged as “talented” by their instructor. For a teacher with a fixed mindset, it might be difficult to understand why effort should be put into those students who don’t seem capable. Such instructors prefer to only work with the top students, not realizing how much potential they might be overlooking and inadvertently not developing.
Instructor mindset can also apply to instructors’ views about teaching ability. If they believe that great instructors are born, not made, then they will likely resist opportunities for professional development. New approaches and pedagogies are threatening because they present the possibility of a decreased sense of efficacy as they move out of their comfortable routine. Growth mindset teachers, on the other hand, will continuously seek out new approaches, and if they don’t work well, view those experiences as learning opportunities.
Take a moment to evaluate yourself and your mindset tendencies. Where do you think you fall in the fixed-growth spectrum? (As with many evaluation tasks, it’s probably easier to roughly categorize some of your colleagues as having more fixed or growth mindsets about their students and their teaching than it is to accurately examine yourself.) Although it’s not always easy to attain, self-awareness is foundational for effective and intentional self-development.
Self-awareness is also one of the key components of metacognition, which leads me to wonder… Will metacognition lead someone to recognize that she needs to develop a growth mindset? Will a growth mindset lead her to become a more metacognitive instructor? These questions lead me to believe that future phases of our metacognitive instruction research project should include explicit efforts to develop awareness of one’s mindset in addition to awareness and self-regulation of the teaching strategies that one chooses.*
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* If you are interested in participating in a future phase of the metacognitive instruction study, please contact one of the two lead investigators: Dr. Lauren Scharff (laurenscharff@gmail.com) or Dr. John Draeger (draegejd@buffalostate.edu).
What Do We Mean by “Metacognitive Instruction”?
by Lauren Scharff (U.S. Air Force Academy*)
Many of you are probably aware of the collaborative, multi-institutional metacognitive instruction research project that we initiated through the Improve with Metacognition site. This project has been invigorating for me on many levels. First, through the process of developing the proposal, I was mentally energized. Several of us had long, thoughtful conversations about what we meant when we used the term “metacognitive instruction” and how these ideas about instruction “mapped” to the concept of “metacognitive learning.” These discussions were extensions of some early blog post explorations, What do we mean when we say “Improve with metacognition”? (Part 1 and Part 2). Second, my involvement in the project led me to (once again) examine my own instruction. Part of this self-examination happened as a natural consequence of the discussions, but also it’s happening in an ongoing manner as I participate in the study as an intervention participant. Good stuff!
For this post, I’d like to share a bit more about our wrangling with what we meant by metacognitive instruction as we developed the project, and I invite you to respond and share your thoughts too.
Through our discussions, we ultimately settled on the following description of metacognitive instruction:
Metacognitive instructors are aware of what they are doing and why. Before each lesson, they have explicitly considered student learning goals and multiple strategies for achieving those goals. During the lesson, they actively monitor the effectiveness of those strategies and student progress towards learning goals. Through this pre-lesson strategizing and during lesson monitoring awareness, a key component of metacognition, is developed; however, awareness is not sufficient for metacognition. Metacognitive instructors also engage in self-regulation. They have the ability to make “in-the-moment”, intentional changes to their instruction during the lesson based on a situational awareness of student engagement and achievement of the learning objectives — this creates a responsive and customized learning experience for the student.
One of the questions we pondered (and we’d love to hear your thoughts on this point), is how these different constructs were related and / or were distinct. We came to the conclusion that there is a difference between reflective teaching, self-regulated teaching, and metacognitive instruction/teaching.
More specifically, a person can reflect and become aware of their actions and their consequences, but at the same time not self-regulate to modify behaviors and change consequences, especially in the moment. A person can also self-regulate / try a new approach / be intentional in one’s choice of actions, but not be tuned in / aware of how it’s going at the moment with respect to the success of the effort. (For example, an instructor might commit to a new pedagogical approach because she learned about it from a colleague. She can implement that new approach despite some personal discomfort due to changing pedagogical strategies, but without conscious and intentional awareness of how well it fits her lesson objectives or how well it’s working in the moment to facilitate her students’ learning.) Metacognition combines the awareness and self-regulation pieces and increases the likelihood of successfully accomplishing the process (teaching, learning, or other process).
Thus, compared to other writings we’ve seen, we are more explicitly proposing that metacognition is the intentional and ongoing interaction between awareness and self-regulation. Others have generally made this claim about metacognitive learning without using the terms as explicitly. For example, “Simply possessing knowledge about one’s cognitive strengths or weaknesses and the nature of the task without actively utilizing this information to oversee learning is not metacognitive.” (Livingston, 1997). But, in other articles on metacognition and on self-regulated learning, it seems like perhaps the metacognitive part is the “thinking or awareness” part and the self-regulation is separate.
What do you think?
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Livingston, J. A. (1997). Metacognition: An Overview. Unpublished manuscript, State University of New York at Buffalo. http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/cep564/metacog.htm
* Disclaimer: The views expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U. S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U. S. Govt.
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
This sometimes humorous article by Justin Kruger and David Dunning describes a series of four experiments that “that incompetent individuals have more difficulty recognizing their true level of ability than do more competent individuals and that a lack of metacognitive skills may underlie this deficiency.” It also includes a nice review of the literature and several examples to support their study.
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1999, Vol. 77, No. 6. 121-1134
Incorporating Metacognition in Tutoring
In this post by by Leonard Geddes, Transforming Your Tutoring Program: How to Move Beyond Important to Being Impactful, he makes a case for training tutors so that they can help their clients become metacognitive learners. The post is largely an advertisement for a LearnWell webinar, but the idea of training tutors seems worthwhile.
Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI): The 5 Perspectives
There are a lot of free surveys/inventories “out there” for all sorts of things, most often related to some aspect of personality. If you use them in a reflective manner, they can help you better understand yourself – your . The TPI (also free) offers a chance for you to reflect on your teaching perspectives (one aspect of metacognitive instruction). The TPI suggests 5 perspectives: Transmission, Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturing, and Social Reform.
The Teaching Learning Group at CSUN
Two years ago, eight faculty at California State University, Northridge, began studying how people learn as a grassroots effort to increase student success by focusing on what instructors do in the classroom. Our website shares our efforts, Five Gears for Activating Learning, as well as supporting resources and projects developed to date (e.g., documents, videos, and a yearlong Faculty Learning Community in progress). Although all five gears interact when people learn and develop expertise, our fifth gear, the Developing Mastery gear, focuses on assisting students in developing their metacognitive skills.
The Six Hour D… And How to Avoid It
This great essay by Russ Dewey (1997) evolved from a handout he used to give his students. He shares some common examples of poor study strategies and explains why they are unlikely to lead to deep learning (even if they are used for 6 hours…). He then shares a simple metacognitive self-testing strategy that could be tailored for courses across the disciplines.
Despite Good Intentions, More is Not Always Better
by Lauren Scharff, U.S. Air Force Academy*
A recent post to the PSYCHTEACH listserv got me thinking about my own evolution as a teacher trying my best to help the almost inevitable small cluster of students who struggled in my courses, often despite claiming to “have studied for hours.” The post asked “Have any of you developed a handout on study tips/skills that you give to your students after the first exam?” A wide variety of responses were submitted, all of which reflected genuinely good intentions by the teachers.
However, based on my ongoing exploration of metacognition and human learning, I believe that, despite the good intentions, some of the recommendations will not consistently lead to the desired results. Importantly, these recommendations actually seem quite intuitive and reasonable on the surface, which leads to their appeal and continued use. Most of those that fall into this less ideal category do so because they imply that “More is Better.”
For example, one respondent shared, “I did correlations of their test scores with their attendance so far, the number of online quizzes they have taken so far, and the combined number of these two things. [All correlations were positive ranging from 0.35 to 0.57.] So I get to show them how their behaviors really are related to their scores…”
This approach suggests several things that all seem intuitively positive: online quizzes are a good way to study and attending class will help them learn. I love the empowerment of students by pointing out how their choice of behaviors can impact their learning! However, the message that more quizzes and simple attendance will lead to better grades does not capture the true complexity of learning.
Another respondent shared a pre-post quiz reflection assignment in which some of the questions asked about how much of the required reading was completed and how many hours were put into studying. Other questions asked about the use of chapter outcomes when reading and studying, the student’s expected grade on the quiz, and an open-ended question requesting a summary of study approaches.
This pre-post quiz approach seems positive for many reasons. Students are forced to think about and acknowledge levels and types of effort that they put into studying for the quizzes. There is a clear suggestion that using the learning outcomes to direct their studying would be a positive strategy. They are asked to predict their grades, which might help them link their studying efforts with predicted grades. These types of activities are actually good first steps at helping students become more metacognitive (aware and thoughtful) about their studying. Yea!
However, a theme running through the questions seems to be, again, “more is better.” More hours. More reading. The hidden danger is that students may not know how to effectively use the learning outcomes, how to read, how to effectively engage during class, how to best take advantage of practice quizzes to promote self-monitoring of learning, or what to do during those many hours of studying.
Thus, the recommended study strategies may work well for some students, but not all, due to differences in how students implement the strategies. Therefore, even a moderately high correlation between taking practice quizzes and exam performance might mask the fact that there are subgroups for which the results are less positive.
For example, Kontur and Terry (2013) found the following in a core Physics course, “On average, completing many homework problems correlated to better exam scores only for students with high physics aptitude. Low aptitude physics students had a negative correlation between exam performance and completing homework; the more homework problems they did, the worse their performance was on exams.”
I’m sure you’re all familiar with students who seem to go through “all the right motions” but who still struggle, become frustrated, and sometimes give up or develop self-doubt about their abilities. Telling students to do more of what they’re already doing if it’s not effective will actually be more harmful.
This is where many teachers feel uncomfortable because they are clearly working outside their disciplines. Teaching students how to read or how to effectively take notes in class, or how to self-monitor their own learning and adjust study strategies to different types of learning expectations is not their area of expertise. Most teachers somehow figured out how to do these things well on their own, or they wouldn’t be teachers now. However, they may never have thought about the underlying processes of what they do when they read or study that allowed them to be successful. They also feel pressures to cover the disciplinary content and focus on the actual course material rather than learning skills. Unfortunately, covering material does little good if the students forget most of the content anyway. Teaching them skills (e.g., metacognitive study habits) offers the prospect of retaining more of the disciplinary content that is covered.
The good news is that there are more and more resources available for both teachers and students (check out the resources on this website). A couple great resources specifically mentioned by the listserv respondents are the How to Get the Most out of Studying videos by Stephen Chew at Samford University and the short reading (great to share with both faculty and students) called The Six Hour D… and How to Avoid it by Dewey (1997). Both of these highlighted resources focus on metacognitive learning strategies.
This reflection on the different recommendations is not meant to belittle the well-intentioned teachers. However, by openly discussing these common suggestions, and linking to what we know of metacognition, I believe we can increase their positive impact. Share your thoughts, favorite study suggestions and metacognitive activities by using the comments link below, or submitting them under the Teaching Strategies tab on this website.
References
Dewey, R. (1997, February 12) The “6 hour D” and how to avoid it. [Online]. Available: http://www.psywww.com/discuss/chap00/6hourd.htm.
Kontur, F. & Terry, N. The benefits of completing homework for students with different aptitudes in an introductory physics course. Cornell Physics Library Physics Education. arXiv:1305.2213
* Disclaimer: The views expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U. S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U. S. Govt.
Incorporating Metacognitive Leadership Development in Class
by Lauren Scharff, U.S. Air Force Academy*
During the spring 2014 semester I decided to try an explicitly metacognitive approach to leadership development in my Foundations for Leadership Development course in the Behavioral Sciences department at the United States Air Force Academy.
I had taught the course twice before and had many discussions with other course instructors. Overall, my sense was that many of our students didn’t intentionally and systematically connect what they were doing and learning in the course with their own personal leadership development. This is despite a paper that focused on a personal leadership development plan, and a video project that focused on implementing positive change within their squadrons.
This course is an upper-level, required core courses in our curriculum, and my section was one of more than 30 with approximately a dozen different instructors teaching sections. At our institution, much of the course structure within core courses is standardized across instructors, but I had 20% of the points with which to do what I desired, as long as 10% somehow assessed accountability for lesson preparation.
I was aware of a foundation of research in skill development (e.g. Svinicki, 2004), so I knew that in order to most effectively develop skills, people need multiple opportunities for practice coupled with feedback. Feedback leads to awareness of strengths, shortcomings, and possible alternate strategies. This understanding of skill development became intertwined with my increasing focus on metacognitive approaches. I came to the conclusion that perhaps part of the less-than-ideal student connection to the course material and objectives occurred because our course activities that were designed to support that connection didn’t provide (require) enough opportunities for practice and continued awareness, especially beyond the classroom and course requirements.
As I prepared for the semester I drew on resources from The Learning Record, which outlines Five Dimensions of Learning that connected well with goals I had for my students’ leadership development: confidence and independence, knowledge and understanding, skills and strategies, use of prior and emerging experience, and critical reflection. The site also shares well-developed activities and assignments that supported my goal of using a metacognitive approach to promote my students’ leadership development.
Ultimately, I designed my course to be centered around journal entries, which I also completed. During each lesson we shared our understandings, questions, and reflections based on the readings, as well as examples of personal observations of leadership and our reflections on how what we were learning might be effectively applied to real situations. More specifically, the journal entries included 1) answers to guided reflection questions about each reading for each lesson, and 2) at least two personal leadership observations and analyses each week. I created a simple grading system so that I wouldn’t be overloaded with assessing journal entries every lesson. (Journal assignment)
A quick poll of my students (N=13) indicated that none of them regularly kept personal journals, and only two had ever had any sort of journal assignment for a class. Thus, this requirement for regular journal writing required a change of habit for them that also represented increased time and energy for class preparation. Although there was some adjustment, when I asked for feedback after two weeks of class, the students were unanimous in their agreement that they were more deeply reading than if I had incorporated reading quizzes for accountability and that they preferred to continue the personal and reading reflections even though they involved frequent writing. Discussion during class was deeper and more engaging than in previous semesters.
Twice during the semester, students wrote evidence-based personal development evaluations, based on a shared example from The Learning Record. Students chose examples from their journals to support their evaluations of their own leadership development. These evaluation exercises forced them to thoughtfully review their observations across the weeks of the semester and develop ongoing awareness of their leadership strengths and weaknesses as well as an understanding of alternate strategies and when/how they might be useful for their leadership efforts. (Personal Development Evaluation assignment)
I also added a question each time that had them evaluate the journal approach and course design. We made some tweaks at mid-semester. By the end of the semester, all but one student reported that the journal entries deepened their learning and personal awareness of their leadership development. While I will likely make some further tweaks in future semesters, I believe that this approach was a success, and that it could be scaled up for larger classes (see the simplified grading scheme in the Journal assignment). Below are sample comments from the final evaluation assignment (released with student permission):
“The leadership journal has had a tremendous effect on my personal development as a leader. The journal has made me aware of my strengths and weaknesses…. The journal allowed me an avenue to give time and actually think about how I am doing as a leader and peer within my environment.”
“The personal observations were definitely helpful for documenting our successes and failures, which we can look back upon and improve. This relates not only to our personal leadership development, but to how we learn about ourselves.”
“These journals have taken all of us on a journey through the semester. They undoubtedly began as something that we disliked and looked down upon each week. However, I have really grown to love and understand this application of leadership growth. They not only provide a chance for us to look back on our leadership gains and failures, they offer an opportunity for us to challenge ourselves in order to write about the things we want to see in ourselves. The journals have become much more than a simple task of writing on a week-to-week basis. They have grown into an outpouring of our character and lives as we turn the page from underclassmen to upper-class leaders and eventually to lieutenants in a few short months. I believe that these journals are also a metaphor for many leadership challenges in that they will be frequent, difficult, and time consuming, but in the end they will let us all grow. ….my reflections are not simply babble, …they actually represent significant growth and understanding of myself.”
References:
Svinicki, Marilla. 2004. Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Co, Inc.
The Learning Record: http://www.learningrecord.org/
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* Disclaimer: The views expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U. S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U. S. Govt.
Calls for Research Collaboration
If you have a planned, new, or ongoing project for which you’d like collaborators from other institutions, submit a short description and explain the type of collaboration you are requesting. For example, you might need statistical assistance, you might want someone to try your approach using a different student population, etc.
Use the comment feature to submit your post.
Request for Assistance in Project Design
If you are interested in designing a research project that investigates the impact of your incorporation of metacognitive strategies in your classroom, use the comment feature to submit a short description of your idea and questions. The Improve with Metacognition creators and consultants will try to assist you, and other site visitors might also comment on your post. Note that it is your responsibility on your end to apply for and receive IRB approval for the ethical use of human participants.
What is your favorite metacognition assignment?
Briefly explain the assignment. Help others understand how you’ve used it. For example, in what level course have you used this? What is the best thing about this assignment? What is a limitation of this assignment?
Share by using the comments feature for this post. If you have a handout to share with more detail, please email it with a short note linking it to your post, and the Improve with Metacognition creators will save it as an online resource and link it to your post. If you are comfortable doing so, you can include your name and email contact so that others can contact you for further information.
What is your favorite in-class metacognition activity?
Briefly explain the activity. Help others understand how you’ve used it. For example, have you used this in small or large classes? What is the best thing about this activity? What is a limitation?
Share by using the comments feature for this post. If you have a handout to share with more detail, please email it with a short note linking it to your post, and the Improve with Metacognition creators will save it as an online resource and link it to your post. If you are comfortable doing so, you can include your name and email contact so that others can contact you for further information.
Promoting Student Metacognition
by Kimberly D. Tanner
This article starts out with two student scenarios with which many faculty will easily resonate (one student with poor and one with good learning skills), and which help make the case for the need to incorporate metacognitive development in college courses. Kimberly then shares some activities and a very comprehensive list of questions that instructors might ask students to answer regarding the planning, monitoring and evaluating of their own learning. While Kimberly makes a point of teaching metacognition within the disciplines, these questions are all generic enough to be used in any discipline. Of note in this article, there is a section that discusses metacognitive instruction, and includes a series of questions that faculty should ask of themselves as they plan, monitor and evaluate their teaching.
CBE—Life Sciences Education; Vol. 11, 113–120, Summer 2012
Teaching Metacognition to Improve Student Learning
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD; published in Teaching Professor Blog October 31, 2012
This blog post offers suggestions for manageable approaches to getting students started in metacognitive types of reflection. Her suggestions are modifications of some shared by Kimberly Tanner in her article on “Promoting Student Metacognition”. Maryellen also astutely points out that, “When you start asking questions about learning, I wouldn’t expect students to greet the activity with lots of enthusiasm. Many of them believe learning is a function of natural ability and not something they can do much about. Others just haven’t paid attention to how they learn.”
Promoting general metacognitive awareness
This informative article by Gregory Schraw begins with a distinction between knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition (lots of great references included), continues with a a discussion of generalization and a summary of some additional research that examines the relationship between metacognition and expertise (cognitive abilities), and finishes with several strategies that instructors can use to develop both metacognitive awareness and regulation.
http://wiki.biologyscholars.org/@api/deki/files/87/=schraw1998-meta.pdf
Webinar Slides: From ‘Student’ to ‘Informed Consumer’ of Learning
by Ed Nuhfer and Karl Wirth
http://www.calstate.edu/itl/documents/ITLFeb72014EN_KW_final.pdf
This very informative and useful set of webinar slides (supported by the CSU Institute for Teaching and Learning) starts with a discussion of metadisciplines, pointing out that “A realization that arises from becoming educated: every metadiscipline offers a valuable way of knowing.” Following that, the presenters discuss three types of learning (knowing, skills and reasoning), and assert that “Ideally, a curricula should help students become mindful of how to distinguish the three and how to learn all three effectively.” They present data showing that most courses in reality emphasize knowledge, followed by skills, and have very little emphasis on developing reasoning. They then propose that metacognition is a means by which to help develop reasoning, and share some specific metacognitive tools and some data that indicate the usefulness of incorporating these tools into our courses.
The effects of distraction on metacognition and metacognition on distraction
Beaman CP, Hanczakowski M and Jones DM (2014) The effects of distraction on metacognition and metacognition on distraction: evidence from recognition memory. Front. Psychol. 5:439. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00439
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00439/abstract (open source full text)
According to the authors (p. 11), “The results documented in our study with free-report tests also reveal that effects of distraction do not end with impairing memory processes. Auditory distraction has important consequences for how accurate people are in monitoring their memory processes, as revealed by impaired resolution of confidence judgments under distraction. Even more importantly, auditory distraction modifies metacognitive control and thus shapes performance when the “don’t know”option is available in a memory test. Participants seem to be aware that auditory distraction is harmful for memory as they become much less confident in their correct responses when distraction is present (see also Ellermeier and Zimmer, 1997; Beaman, 2005b).
Metacognition distinguishes Good from Great Learners
In the thought-provoking blog post, Why Good Students Do “Bad” in College: Impactful Insights by Leonard Geddes, he discusses why a large percent of good students in college do not live up to their potential. In this post, he makes the statement that “metacognition is where good students and great learners differ most. In fact, research shows that students who are not metacognitively aware will struggle in college (Caverly D.C., 2009).” He goes on to share a couple great resources to help students develop their metacognitive abilities.