Author: Lauren Scharff

What do we mean when we say “Improve with metacognition”? (Part One)

by Lauren Scharff (U.S. Air Force Academy*) and John Draeger (SUNY Buffalo State)

This website is being built to help instructors, students, and researchers improve with metacognition.  We and many others are convinced that the use of metacognition has many benefits. Yet, in conversations between ourselves and others, we realize that, while the term ‘metacognition’ is used widely and its usage is growing, it is potentially used differently by students, instructors, and researchers within and across institutions.  To get a sense of how the term is being used, we gave an informal survey to a convenience sample of faculty and students at our institutions. A self-selecting group of volunteers (30 faculty and 11 students) provided quick thoughts on what they believe is meant by the term ‘metacognition’ and why they believe metacognition is important. This post will focus on some perceptions of metacognition and next week’s post will focus on some of its perceived benefits.

When asked “what is metacognition?,” the majority of student and faculty respondents answered “thinking about thinking.”  While this response captures the essence of the topic, it is also fairly cliché and too vague to be useful by itself. It signals, for example, an intentional and conscious effort (thinking) about a process (thinking). It is unsatisfying in itself because it does not say enough about what is meant by thinking.  Thus, it would be difficult for someone to use if wanting to implement metacognitive practices.

For the majority of the faculty, the response of ‘thinking about thinking’ was the opening shorthand for further elaboration. Refinements to “thinking about thinking” often fell into three broad categories. In particular, metacognition might involve:

(1)   an awareness of how problems are set up, how ideas are worked through and  which learning strategies seem most effective.

“…an awareness of one’s own thinking and decision-making processes.”

“…being aware of how you most effectively learn something or think through complex issues.”

“…recognizing how he/she learns.”

(2)   some level of intentionality or purposeful choosing of a learning strategy. Even if it turns out not to work well, students are exhibiting metacognition when they make a conscious decision about how to approach a learning task (e.g., how to study, solve a problem, make a decision).

“…ability to regulate (or choose) the best cognitive process for solving a problem or engaging a task.”

“…taking time to figure out how we best learn, remember, and use information.”

(3)   Understanding or developing an understanding of processes related to thinking and learning

“Metacognition is the process of understanding our own thinking, including capabilities, limitations, biases.”

“…an understanding of how we learn and incorporate new knowledge.”

“…getting a student to think about why they hold a certain point of view, how did they come to hold that point of view.”

For students, ‘thinking about thinking’ was all that most could say about metacognition, with more than half of the students responding that they had no idea at all. Only one student gave a more elaborate answer:

“It is being aware of the thought process that goes on inside one’s own mind, and being able to understand how one thinks and makes decisions”

As instructors who might try to or who are currently incorporating metacognitive practices into our courses, we should remember that the vast majority of our students are likely to have either no concept of metacognition or only a superficial understanding of it. Thus, we must be as explicit as we can about what we mean by the term and what precisely we are aiming for when we teach metacognition. By going beyond the simple definition of “thinking about thinking,” we will be able to better develop specific behaviors related to effective learning.

However, rather than choosing to focus on just one of the three categories of refinements as if they were interchangeable, we believe that each of the refinement categories offers distinct contributions to our ability to understand and develop metacognition. Awareness is not the same as understanding; without understanding, one may choose less appropriate learning strategies. On the other hand, one can technically understand aspects of learning without being aware of one’s own learning processes, which is also likely to lead to less effective choice of strategies. Finally, a student’s intentional choice does not guarantee learning effectiveness, but using learning techniques out of convenience or ignorance of alternate strategies is even less likely to consistently lead to success.

In sum, while ‘metacognition’ encompasses a relatively complex set of processes, the quick shorthand offered by many of our participants, “thinking about thinking,” gets us going in a useful direction. If we also consider the various refinements offered, then ‘thinking about thinking’ might be approximated as “intentional awareness to achieve understanding about a process, such as learning, in order to enhance the development of that process.”

Next week we will explore reasons why it might be important for faculty and students to learn about and begin to incorporate and practice metacognition within academic settings.

 

* 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.


What Extra Credit Participation Teaches Us about Creating Buy-in for Metacognition

by Lauren Scharff, U.S. Air Force Academy*

At a surface level you might wonder what sort of parallel I sense between metacognition and extra credit activity engagement.  After all, metacognition is a cognitive process – a process by which someone becomes consciously and intentionally aware of their state of performance and of strategies that might help or are hindering their performance.  Extra credit, on the other hand, is an opportunity to earn extra points on an assignment or in a course.

One possible link is that an instructor’s inclusion of both types of activities is motivated by their desire to increase students’ success in a course. While this is likely true, I believe that a more crucial link for us to attend to is the pattern of student “buy-in” to the activities, with stronger students often showing earlier adoption and motivation, and weaker students often showing low motivation and resistance.

As many instructors have observed through their years of teaching, the students who choose to participate in extra credit activities, especially early in a term, are often those who are least likely to need the extra credit. The weaker students, who arguably could benefit most from both the points and additional learning opportunities, choose not to participate, or wait until the very last chance to participate at the end of the semester.  Similarly, some of us who have intentionally implemented metacognitive practices into our courses have found that the students who most readily appreciated the benefits of metacognitive practices and used them to modify their learning behaviors to increase their success were the stronger, more advanced students. Many of the weaker students complained that the metacognitive activities were a waste of time because they were focused on learning behaviors and not the specific course material to be learned.

I argue that we should care about this pattern because we want to maximize the learning and success of the full range of our students.  Thus, a “one-size-fits-all” approach when implementing metacognitive strategies will almost inevitably fail for too many of our students, and we need to scaffold the activities more than we might initially realize.

This need for scaffolding may not be obvious at first to those of us who already understand a lot about human learning processes and who already believe in and practice metacognition. The benefits seem so apparent to us!  But, we must realize that many of our students, especially the weaker ones, won’t immediately perceive the benefits of taking time to reflect on their learning and try new strategies. Many of these students have been “successful” using a limited range of learning behaviors, and have not yet reached the realization that alternate learning approaches would be worth their while, especially as the academic demands within courses increase.  Further, shifting learning behaviors takes time and effort, so in the short run, they might see more cost than benefit.  Therefore, they avoid spending time trying new learning strategies, and report that metacognitive activities are an even greater “waste of time” because they don’t immediately seem to help them accomplish typical course assignments for which they’ll receive points. In their chapter on “desirable difficulties,” Elizabeth and Robert Bjork note several learning strategies that slow apparent learning in the short term, but enhance long-term learning.  While the authors don’t explicitly mention the use of metacognitive strategies, they too fit that category of providing a desirable difficulty.

Some of the differences between the observed levels of motivation and engagement across students might also be linked to student mindset (see Carol Dweck’s work, e.g. Dweck, 1996). Students who show incremental/malleable intelligence beliefs, i.e. mindset, believe that they can improve their abilities in certain skill areas (e.g. math, writing, speaking) rather than believing that they are inherently “good” or “okay” or “bad” at such skills (a fixed/entity mindset). Typically the former type of student seeks learning challenges and mastery-oriented learning behaviors.  Metacognitive reflection could be considered a type of mastery-oriented learning behavior. [Hmmmm… sounds like a great topic to research!  What IS the relationship between mindset and adoption of metacognitive approaches?]

Changing gears back to application, if you’re an instructor who plans to incorporate metacognitive approaches into your course in order to promote student learning, awareness of different levels of buy-in and some possible reasons behind the differences can help your effort be more successful. You can increase your awareness of how the activities are being received by asking students for their feedback.  What do they think about the activities?  Do they believe the activities help their learning, why or why not? What is something new they’ve tried and how did it go for them?

Just understanding the student perceptions isn’t enough, however.  How and what you do to present the activities and embed them in your course will impact student perceptions and likelihood to engage in the activities. For example, you should be sure to explain (and re-visit multiple times throughout the semester) the potential benefits of metacognitive reflection, addressing student feedback in your discussions.  If possible, collect data about their learning and share it with them (e.g. exam performance based on self-reported learning strategies). You might need to take time to explicitly share alternate learning strategies for your course so that if students reflect that what they’re doing is not working well, they have some accessible alternate options to try. Finally, it might be beneficial to make the metacognitive activities worth some points toward the course grade.

The bottom line is that, as instructors, we have control over how we present the value of metacognition in our courses, and by being thoughtful about it, we will be able to increase the “buy-in” from a greater range of our students, hopefully reaching more of those who need it the most.

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Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In M. A. Gernsbacher, R. W. Pew, L. M. Hough, & J. R. Pomerantz (Eds.), Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society (pp. 56-64). New York: Worth Publishers.

Dweck, C. (1996). Implicit theories as Organizers of Goals and Behaviors, pp. 69-90. In: Gollwitzer, P. & Bargh, Eds, The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior, J. Guilford Press: New York.

* 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.