Using Business Ethics Case Studies to Foster Metacognition and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) Appreciation

by Dr. Charles Zola, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Catholic and Dominican Institute

The values of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have recently emerged as an area of concern in many areas of contemporary American life. Societal pressure and expectations have motivated many in the business community to examine how these values are promoted in contemporary American business practice. Similarly, accreditors for schools of business now require that these values be reflected in the curriculum and that students demonstrate an awareness of and appreciation for DEI. However, they have not been proscriptive in how this is to be accomplished. I suggest that using case studies can serve this learning outcome and by having students reflect upon their proposed resolutions to DEI-related moral dilemmas arising in business, they develop metacognitive skills which engenders a greater understanding of the implications of DEI in the workplace.

Case Studies and Metacognition

Case studies have long been used as part of business ethics pedagogy. Utilizing case studies promotes understanding of ethical theories that are usually unfamiliar to students and can gradually build student confidence in arguing a moral point of view with the aim of solving a moral dilemma. Beyond this, case study pedagogy can be employed to develop students’ metacognitive capacities. After applying ethical theories to navigate moral dilemmas and justify proposed solutions, students can be prompted to examine why they choose the moral theories that they do and why they apply them in the way they do. Additionally, students can be prompted to resolve the same case study employing a different moral theory, for example, substituting deontological or virtue ethics for a utilitarian approach. They then compare how their proposed resolutions align. In doing so, students not only gain fluency in applied ethical reasoning, but a greater awareness of how their own moral reasoning changes in each iteration. This practice challenges students to be more conscious and reflective about their thinking in terms of application of ethical principles to the same case study and if such application alters the resolution in any way. Inculcating this approach into course pedagogy strengthens students’ metacognitive activity.

If time allows, continued reflection can encourage students to consider the suitability of the application of moral principles among cases, revealing greater similarity and differences not only in the theories themselves but also in procedures and policies that regulate business. In assessing the effectiveness of their proposed solutions, students can be further prompted to re-examine their moral dialectics to ascertain if all aspects of a moral dilemma are adequately addressed and if the moral agents impacted find themselves in a better or worse situation.

One way that this can be encouraged is that for each case study, students could chart the application of each ethical theory where they identify the way/s that moral agents were impacted and how the potential outcomes varied. Each chart can then serve as a metacognitive tool that students use to reflect upon their own thinking processes. If case study analysis is done by teams of smaller groups within a class, then the charts can provide even more information for reflection. A comparison and review of the charts can result in discovering where some essential points were inadequately addressed or not addressed at all, or where potential outcomes were not foreseen. This may result in having students revisit and revise their earlier positions and think about how they reasoned through the moral dilemma. On the other hand, these charts can reveal how their moral reasoning resulted in optimal outcomes, thus affirming the important and practical role that business ethics has for business practice. These varied approaches encourage students to reflect upon their critical thinking and cultivate metacognitive awareness.

Case Studies and DEI

One of the most important topics of a business ethics course that relates to DEI is justice. Classically defined as “giving to each their due,” justice is an essential moral value that regulates how businesses are expected to operate both internally and within the wider community and, thus, is a core value of DEI. Addressing almost every area of business from workplace etiquette to graver considerations such global warming, case studies can be utilized to foster appreciation for the importance of justice. At minimum, businesses act justly in respecting civil law, especially in relation to Civil Rights. These laws seek to eradicate decades of inequality and injustice in terms of business activities related to hiring, promotion, discipline, and discharge of employees and this is closely aligned with the objectives of DEI initiatives. Extending beyond, corporate social responsibility challenges businesses to consider just actions in terms of paternalistic actions within the community that range from philanthropy to efforts to curb and reduce the exploitation of natural resources that often contributes disproportionate harm and inequalities for populations in developing economies.

Case studies drawn from the aforementioned topics can help students understand how justice and the values and goals of DEI are related to business in two distinct ways. First, the case studies themselves can illustrate challenges and opportunities for creating a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace, or how businesses can effectively support those values beyond the workplace through initiatives related to corporate social responsibility.

The other is by reframing the case studies themselves. Changing key characteristics of the moral agents can generate greater sensitivity to some of the moral aims of DEI. Switching the age, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and socio-economic identity of a moral agent invites students to view the case study and moral dilemma in a different light and from multiple perspectives. For example, would the moral dilemma and proposed solution be the same if the main character was no longer a Hispanic woman but a White woman who was diagnosed with cancer and recently divorced? Are the demands of justice to give to each their due reflected in the case study analysis and subsequent resolution? This reframing can challenge students to reconsider their own moral analysis and proposed resolutions from a more empathetic perspective, hopefully engendering a greater sensitivity to the goals of DEI.

In light of this, students can be encouraged to consider if they would remain committed to what they initially viewed as the moral dilemma, or would this alter the analysis? Similarly, would the proposed resolution of the moral conflict remain the same or would change as well? Further prompting encourages metacognition by challenging students to reflect upon how and why the reframing might have altered their thinking about the moral dimensions of the case study as well as its resolution.

Equally important in raising issues related to justice and DEI is a concern for rectifying societal inequalities of the past. Students can be prompted to review and reflect upon their analysis and proposed resolution of a moral dilemma to discern if it advances the interests of traditionally marginalized groups and affirms a more equitable society. Crafted in this way, case study analysis can raise students’ exploration of the meaning of corporate social responsibility and how it reflects a commitment to social justice.

Beyond this, students could be encouraged to reflect on how their own identities and circumstances may have shaped how they responded to the case study. In what way and to what extent might their own biographies have influenced their impressions about the situation that had been presented and how they reasoned to resolve it? Students can be prompted to examine if their moral reasoning betrayed a bias due to their own circumstances and if not, why not? Such an exercise can be doubly beneficial if students work in teams and share with fellow students their observations, yielding an even wider perspective about how a diversity of viewpoints may impact the resolution of a moral dilemma. Furthermore, doing so also models for students a respect for diversity and inclusion by giving each member of their team “their due” in being able to share their views and having them considered.

Using case studies in the ways described can help to advance one of the essential learning outcomes for schools of business, namely, that future business professionals aspire to ethical conduct in their professional lives and promote it in everyday business practice. Too often, case study pedagogy can remain a mere academic exercise completed unrelated to personal development and cultivating reassessment of personal moral codes. If so, such pedagogical practice is sterile. However, careful attention to case study pedagogy that encourages metacognitive reflection can gradually cultivate habits of moral thinking that translates into moral agency that eventually can be transformative of business practice as it relates to the goals of DEI.

Democratizing a Classroom: The Challenge of Student Engagement and Metacognition

by Dr. Sonya Abbye Taylor, Associate Professor of Education and Chair of Education Division

INTRODUCTION: DEMOCRATIZING A CLASSROOM AND CREATING A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS

John Dewey in 1917, introduced the concept of student engagement. In creating classroom democracies, “communities … permeated throughout with the spirit of art, history, and science”— environments where students became self-directed, committed to service, and engaged in experiences reflective of society. Dewey believed in relevant curriculum, meaningful to students’ lives—in which students are thoroughly engaged with content, among a community of learners functioning as and in society. I believe that a community of learners relies upon student engagement and metacognition is intrinsically connected to being engaged. Student engagement provides the core of democratic classrooms, with the role of promoting and educating towards diversity, equity, and inclusion.

THE CHALLENGE OF METACOGNITION AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

I prepare teacher candidates to work with diverse populations, including students with special needs. I have rarely had complaints regarding grades. Students could predict grades because they had processed feedback and reflected on their work throughout the semester. Yet, last spring I received a complaint. Considering her grades averaged within the “A” range, a student questioned why she received an “A-.” She questioned if her grade was related to participation for which she received 35/75 points; she was correct. This experience required me to reflect on Dewey’s concepts of engagement in relation to class participation and to reflect on connections between learning and engagement. Aligning Dewey’s concept of “community of learners” with student engagement, I see how metacognition—the student’s and my own—underlies this pedagogical struggle. What was the student’s understanding of engagement and participation? How did her understanding equate with my own?

During this course, held synchronously, online, this student was invisible except for two presentations for which visibility was required. However, when reviewing videos, I found times she responded in chat and discussions: brief responses, one-word comments or a sentence, emanating from a black box on the screen.

My expectations for students in online environments are comparable to in-person classes. Classes include discussions that require sharing ideas, asking questions, analyzing, and deliberating. The 75 points allocated, places value on discussions. If a student is silent throughout a semester, they have not contributed to the community. Yet, this student perceived themselves to have been engaged, to have demonstrated engagement, and therefore eligible for full- credit.

As I thought about this contradiction the following questions emerged:

What do we learn when we:

learn in isolation?
interact with individuals within a learning community?
delve into content while engaging within a learning community?

Most importantly, what is the relationship between learning, engagement, and learning within the community, in preparing students to be teachers for the democratic society Dewey describes?

For teacher educators and teacher candidates, answers to these questions provide more fodder for thought. We can learn in isolation. We can memorize information alone, anywhere or engage with a text while reading thoughtfully, asking silent questions of the text and author. We can learn sitting silently in a classroom. We CAN learn in isolation, but WHAT do we learn? What opportunities are missed when we function in this manner?

A silent classroom has always been troublesome to me. Student engagement and class participation are synonymous to me. It is joyful to hear students discussing content, actively listening, asking questions, and sharing opinions based on their frame of reference.

Isn’t that the vision of democracy Dewey conveys?
Don’t these interactions provide practice communicating, and enable students to see another’s point of view, to understand perspectives and experiences of individuals from other cultures?
Aren’t these the interactions that enable us to understand and appreciate one another?

Students can learn content without opportunities and expectations for engagement with others. However, in vibrant learning communities, students ask questions and question themselves; they think and rethink concepts because of the various influences. They use metacognitive processes to evolve as learners.

I changed the student’s grade because she perceived her actions constituted participation. Though the student received an “A,” I did her no favor. Informed by Dewey, I believe the “A” she received was not as valuable as the “B’s,” “A-’s,” or “A’s,” earned by other students who demonstrated engagement. Those students were visible: the expressions on their faces illuminated their thoughts. Posing thoughtful questions and adding to discussions, those students enriched the experience for us all. They responded while they were processing. When their responses were askew, conversation ensued that brought the level of thought and understanding to higher levels. They demonstrated their commitment to learning and being part of a community were more important than having the “right” answer. They earned my respect and my confidence, knowing that their classrooms will be full of engaged learners, that they will encourage their students to think and will engage them in metacognitive practices.

CONCLUSION

I agonized over this grade, and by doing so, I know I served myself and my future students well. I will redouble my efforts to define and explain the value of engagement in relation to “community” and to create more activities, pose more questions and provide collaborative assignments that inspire engagement in efforts to make engagement palpable. I will do a better job of calling attention to student engagement. I will continue to honor askew responses because of the thought processes they illuminate. Metacognition has brought me to these conclusions, and will be the catalyst for changes that I’ll incorporate in my instruction and the emphasis I will place on my students to be self-directed.

In processing and metacognitively rethinking ideas for my classes and revisions for this paper, I reflected further on Dewey’s perception of engagement for a community of learners reflective of the society, and have come to this conclusion. We teach classes with diverse students therefore we have the opportunity and obligation to create environments in our classrooms where students can be productive members of the classroom society. We must create environments where students can function efficiently and develop the skills and behaviors desirable in a democratic society. In these environments students are respected and are comfortable to take risks; they listen to each other, communicate effectively, accept each other’s opinions, settle disagreements, celebrate each other’s successes, and support each other through difficult times. By creating these environments in teacher education classrooms perhaps there would be consensus as to the quality and value of engagement.

Works Cited

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. Simon and Brown, 2012

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:

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).
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.
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.

Identity Matters: Creating Brave Spaces through Disputatio and Discernment

by Marie-Therese C. Sulit, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Honors Program, Mount Saint Mary College

Six months ago, colleges and universities across America—and the world—shut down in an effort to curb the COVID-19 Pandemic even as the unjust deaths of Black Americans likewise instigated a call-and-response from administrators. Calls for racial awareness, couched within various campus initiatives under the banner of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” [DEI], have been issued to address and investigate variegated forms of institutional racism. As we follow social-distancing protocols on campus, how can those of us particularly invested in DEI continue to create a space for healthy and honest discourse within our diverse and divergent campus communities?

CREATING A SPACE FOR DISPUTATIO

In the opening piece of this mini-series, I bridge reflection with metacognition in order to address the place of the affective, and contemplative, pedagogy within the teaching and learning climate of a classroom amidst this pandemic. In this closing piece, I seek to highlight disputatio as a contemplative practice particular to Dominican colleges and universities like Mount Saint Mary College. “A method that seeks to resolve difficult questions and controverted issues by finding the truth in each,” the strengths of disputatio reflect its conceptual complexity in accounting not only for one’s “talents” and “abilities,” particularly in rigorous argumentation, but also in addressing “urgent questions of justice and peace” (A Vision in Service of Truth 5). In other words, the contemplative nature of self-examination inherent in disputatio is synonymous with metacognitive reflection or reflective metacognition.

The focus on “urgent questions of justice and peace” affirms disputatio as a tool for answering the call of the Black Lives Matter movement on our home campuses. More so, the cultivation of disputatio, as a “rigorous exploration of multiple ways of resolving a question,” necessitates a process of discernment of “the truth” in “truth-seeking endeavors” predicated on understanding multiple and disparate perspectives (A Vision in Service of Truth 5). This is to say, disputatio, by design, honors those diverse and divergent stakeholders on our campus communities–voices that must be at the table as we move forward with DEI initiatives at the college.

PRACTICING DISPUTATIO THROUGH READING LITERATURE

How we represent ourselves and our situations, in and out of the classroom, is both an interpretive and political act when we consider how we, as people, in particular situations, can be re-presented and/or mis-represented through our institutional structure and through our use of language within the teaching-and-learning environment. As a multicultural practitioner in literature, I teach literature through the prisms of history, culture, and society. I deploy the following steps that ascribe forms of literacy to the reading process with the understanding that the subject matter can reveal one’s conscious and unconscious biases as participants listen, reflect, and respond; one can only know one’s own position through understanding the positions of others.

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, via in-person and computer-mediated communication.
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.

Of course, understanding the multiple truths in this reading process is predicated on students feeling safe enough to honestly share the lenses through which they read. If we consider our classroom and our campus as “safe,” then that “safe space” can be fraught as both the common and the contested ground on which all of us stand.

FROM A “SAFE” PLACE TO A “BRAVE” SPACE: ENTER … DISCERNMENT

To further the contemplative practice of disputatio, I begin the processes of reflection cum metacognition utilizing “Crosswalk Prompts,” created by fellow multicultural practitioner, Dr. Paul Gorski. These prompts run the gamut in inquiring about all components of one’s identity: race and ethnicity, socio-economic class and education, to gender and sexuality, religion and spirituality. Students and the instructor respond to questions by either standing or raising a hand to self-identify. For example, “If you worry semester to semester whether you’ll be able to afford your college tuition” or “If an educator, counselor, or other authority figure ever discouraged you from pursuing a particular field of study or profession.” Students and the educator are required to look around the room to see who among them are standing or sitting. Thus, each individual’s subject positions are established from the onset for ensuing lively, and at times challenging, dialogues to be held throughout the semester. Given the sensitive nature of some of the questions, it is important that participants feel safe so they can be brave and share with the class. Thus, in contradistinction to the word “safe,” the word, “brave,” conceptually allows for one’s vulnerability and exposure within and throughout the classroom.

Applying the contemplative, cum argumentative, practice of disputatio, disciplinary parameters provide the structure to discern “the truth” and “truth-seeking endeavors” within a specific classroom through its course content. Metacognition constitutes both disputatio and discernment, thus including both a form of argumentation and a means by which multiple and/or disparate perspectives can be brought to light. Thus, the processes of reflective metacognition, or metacognitive reflection, provide the methodology for one and all in a particular site to discern the components of their own “baggage” between and among others.

CONCLUSION

Currently, the Mount stands poised on its own DEI Initiative, integrated into its Strategic Plan for 2020-2025, which includes objectives and focus areas guiding the establishment of Implementation Teams and their respective leaders, for the curriculum, the institutional structure and organization, and the students. Various co- and extra-curricular initiatives are underway to encourage and promote awareness about DEI, including a Knight Reading Initiative centering Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi’s Tell Me Who You Are (2020), a set of personal narratives centering on race, culture, and identity.

As this college-wide reading initiative unfolds this fall, it is up to each discipline to determine for themselves how to integrate these components into their curriculum. To facilitate this process, I offer tools for teaching multicultural literature through the steps of the reading process and identifying the subject positions of all classroom participants as readers. In moving forward, it is my hope that disputatio and discernment will guide debates and discussions of any particular narrative. It is also my hope that metacognitive reflection, or reflective metacognition, at the heart of disputatio will guide all our campus’s conversations as we continue to discern who and what is at stake in our larger work of cultivating justice and peace.

WORKS CITED

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

Gorski, Paul C. PhD. “Crosswalk Prompts.” 11 September 2012. Hand-Out.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my colleagues—Megan Morrissey, Gina Evers, and Charles Zola—for supplementing my lone voice with theirs. I would also like to thank our editors, Lauren Scharff and John Drager, for giving us the opportunity to share our work at Mount Saint Mary College with the readers of “Improve with Metacognition.”

Contemplation and Service as Metacognition: The Dominican Scholars of Hope

by Charles Zola, Assistant to the President in Mission Integration, Director of the Catholic and Dominican Institute, and Associate Professor of Philosophy

High Impact Practices (HIPs) and Learning Communities (LCs)

The AAC&U identified Several High-Impact Practices (HIPs) designed to significantly improve student success (Brownell and Swaner xiii). One type of HIP is a living learning community (LLC) where faculty and students engage in a more focused and intentional way than is normally experienced in traditional courses. LLCs can take various forms, and in 2016, the Catholic and Dominican Institute of Mount Saint Mary College launched a LLC inspired by the heritage and mission of the school entitled, The Dominican Scholars of Hope (DSH) Program.

Open to all Mount students regardless of religious affiliation, the program cultivates the Dominican value of contemplation in the lives of students. This post provides an overview of how reflective engagement in the diverse requirements of the program heightens members’ self-awareness and actualizes their capacity for self-improvement and ability to contribute to the community.

Background: Dominican Contemplation and the Four Dominican Pillars

Study and contemplation engage all of reality in the pursuit of the true and the good for the sake of others. … Dominicans have engaged the reality of the world and sought a deeper truth through assiduous study and contemplation. Dominican pedagogy, then, is a union of study and contemplation in the service of truth, wherever it leads.” (The Dominican Charism in American Higher Education.)

Since its founding in the 13th-century, Saint Dominic de Guzman recognized the essential contribution that formal academic study and contemplation had in fulfilling the objectives of the Order. For nearly eight centuries, these values shaped the intellectual tradition of the Dominicans and the schools that they founded. The Dominican intellectual tradition articulates an intimate connection between the intellectual and practical ends of life mediated through community and service.

Dominican saint and scholar Saint Thomas Aquinas weighed the merits between scholarly activity and service. Reasoning that it is better to illuminate than to shine, Aquinas argued what has been gained in study and contemplation is meant to be shared with others: contemplare et contemplate aliis trader (to contemplate and to share with others what has been contemplated). Consequently, the Dominican ethos is structured around four main values or pillars: spirituality, study, community, and service.

The Dominican Scholars of Hope and Metacognition

The objectives of the DSH program are similar to those proposed for LCs in the LEAP initiative, but refracted through the prism of Dominican higher education’s emphasis on the four pillars. As such, the program has the following objectives: 1. cultivate students’ academic development through membership in a supportive learning community that is conducive to study and scholarship; 2. foster students’ personal, spiritual, and social development through community-building activities; 3. foster students’ character formation through participation in programs related to community service and social justice.

DSH programming aims to cultivate a contemplative disposition in the students, guiding and encouraging them to develop habits of mind and heart that align with the practices and outcomes of metacognition, cultivating awareness and using that awareness to guide actions.

~Spirituality~

The Dominican tradition understands spirituality as a means to gain deeper awareness of self, the world and God. In turn, self-awareness intimately links to the deeper existential questions of life concerning meaning and purpose.

Weekly meditation and journaling promotes this objective. Weekly meetings begin with time for quiet reflection and communal prayer. Students are provided a brief explanation of a religiously based theme, followed by reflective questions that invite students to consider how the values or lessons illustrated by the theme may relate to their own lives or the larger community.

After a period of quiet reflection and contemplation, students are invited to share their thoughts with the group. Student feedback varies, but often students share personal feelings of stress or anxiety related to school, personal issues, or current events. Other times, students express recognition of their limitations and see, in this kind of prayer or religious meditation, the means by which they find inner strength and resiliency to face whatever might challenge them.

In addition to the public, communal meditation, students are also strongly encouraged to journal. Each year, members receive a bound journal, with the expectation that they will use it to record their personal thoughts throughout the year. This type of reflection may be more compelling to students who are introverted and reluctant to share their thoughts in the weekly meditation period.

The experiences of communal reflection and journaling provides an opportunity wherein students are able to assess their personal values in light of spirituality. In doing so, they can recalibrate, redirect or recommit to their values.

~Community and Service~

Free to select the type of service event that best suits their schedules, members of the DSH are required to participate in three community service events per academic year. Afterward, students submit a reflection on their participation. The reflection exercise asks them to consider three main points in order to heighten their awareness of the impact of their service and how that might affect them going forward:

What circumstances or conditions created the need to offer service to others?
What impact do you see your service having in the lives of others?
In what ways has your service changed any of your attitudes about others, the world, or yourself?

In reading and commenting on the students’ reflections on service, I have been struck by how much the students empathize with the plight of those who are less fortunate than they are. Their reflection helps to engender a greater understanding of and appreciation for their own ability to help others, and, more importantly, a greater sensitivity to the needs of others.

~Study~

The DSH program neither offers nor requires any particular courses. However, the program encourages students to view education in a more holistic way that is not limited to a traditional classroom setting and major requirements. This objective coincides with the Dominican ideal that values contemplation as an “engage[ment] in the reality of the world.”

Free to choose from a broad range of approved events, members are required to write three formal reflection exercises per academic semester that are based upon an academic or co-curricular activity. Among these are communal field trips to educational sites, attending guest lectures, artistic performances, participation in campus workshops, or extra-curricular activities.

The reflection exercise asks students consider several points:

What did they learn, and did it relate to a subject they are currently studying?
Did the event make them more interested in learning more about the topic?
Did their views or perspectives change because of the event?
Will their future actions change because of what they learned or experienced?

The students’ papers are returned with comments and become part of their individual portfolio. At the end of the academic year, students review their portfolio that also includes their community service reflections. They then engage in a summary and evaluative reflection, considering how they have developed and matured through participation in the program’s requirements.

Conclusion

In my estimation, the end-of-the-year reflective summation best reveals the metacognitive value of the program. Similar to Aristotle’s definition of god as “thought thinking itself,” the students’ annual review challenges them to develop awareness of how their own ideas and values may have been strengthened, developed, or transformed over the course of the year.

Personal change and development rarely occur in one moment or due to one event; it is usually a gradual process. The portfolio review provides students the opportunity to view themselves over a short span of time using their own reflective narrative as the means to gain a better sense of themselves and the unique contribution that they can make to social justice and the common good.

WORKS CITED

Brownell, J.E., and L. E. Swaner. 2010. Five High Impact Practices: Research on Learning Outcomes, Completion, and Quality. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

The Dominican Charism in American Higher Education: A Vision in Service of Truth. 2013. Dominican Higher Education Colloquium: 11.

Training Tutor-Learners in Contemplation: Reflection in the Writing Center

by Gina R. Evers, M.F.A., Director of the Writing Center, Mount Saint Mary College

REFLECTION AS BENCHMARK

An institution that foregrounds “contemplation” as one of its core Dominican values, Mount Saint Mary College is no stranger to conversations around metacognition. I chime in as the founding director of our on-campus Writing Center. Our mission is to provide supplemental writing instruction, which we do through one-on-one, peer-facilitated consultations. I train and mentor a staff of seven undergraduate writing tutors, who conduct an average of 614 consultations every academic year.

As peer tutors, my team moves fluidly between learning and teaching as they participate in ongoing tutor training while simultaneously advising their writers. This makes training complex, as their roles as tutor-learners shifts to those of tutor-teachers the moment they sit down for an appointment.

So how do I know whether I’ve effectively trained my tutors to not only navigate their dual roles but also to be successful in the one-to-one teaching of writing? My benchmark has become reflection itself. While I certainly equip my team with the necessary grammatical concepts, rhetorical awareness, and writing process theory, I’ve designed this writing instruction within pedagogically reflective structures. Anyone can train in comma usage – no doubt a valuable communication skill – but training in reflection allows the tutor to determine whether and how a lesson on the comma might benefit their writer. When my tutors engage in authentic and honest self-observation, reflection, and ultimately metacognition during our staff meetings, they demonstrate the requisite skill to be effective teachers of writing.

TUTOR-LEARNERS REFLECT ON WRITING CENTER WORK

I asked my tutors for their insights on the role of reflection in tutor training during a recent staff meeting. During our meeting, we discussed assessment scholars Elizabeth Barkley and Claire Major’s comparison of student-learning outcomes to archery. Barkley and Major say a learning goal is an archer seeing their target; a learning objective is an archer aiming for their target, and a learning outcome is an archer hitting their target.

Applying this to the Writing Center, my tutors were quick to extend the analogy. The archer is one of our writers, who comes to us for assistance wielding the bow of writing skills. With our training on how to use the bow, the writer is able to hit their target: a “good” paper. But, as my tutor Leanna astutely noted, if all we do is teach writers to produce “good” papers, once they’re in a new environment they won’t be able to use the bow independently, making the target suddenly elusive and strange.

In his foundational 1984 essay, Stephen North notes that a writing center “represents the marriage of … [writing] as a process … [and] that writing curricula need to be student-centered” (North 49-50). In the Writing Center, it’s the tutors who tailor our writing curricula to every individual writer who walks through our doors. We understand that the writing process is distinct for every individual writer and for every individual writing project they undertake.

North understands this too, and that understanding fuels his dictum that writing centers create “better writers, not better writing (50, emphasis mine). That is to say, because curricula is tailored to each individual, and because that individual’s process varies based on their current project, we have to focus on the individual and their skill set – the archer and their technique in using the bow – in order for them to be able to navigate any future writing project that might be coming their way. In order for the Writing Center to truly support our writers in this, its tutors must be equipped with tools to assess and reflect on what each individual writer needs before teaching them that content.

REFLECTIVE PEDAGOGIES IN WRITING TUTOR TRAINING

For tutor training, my staff and I meet for a two-hour seminar each week. During these meetings, I structure reflection on writing center scholarship, reflection on the tutors’ own writing and writing process, as well as reflection on tutoring skills. The common denominator is clear:

Writing Center Scholarship. No tutor training program would be complete without covering foundational theories in the one-to-one teaching of writing, and discussions of the readings ask tutors to thoughtfully reflect on their own tutoring practices in light of the scholarship, thereby connecting writing center theory to writing center practice.
Writing Instruct-shops. A term of my own invention, the writing instruct-shop blends three modes of writing instruction: in-classroom instruction, the writing consultation, and the writing workshop. Using one of the tutor’s pieces of academic writing as the text, I facilitate these instruct-shops to simultaneously practice tutoring skills (borrowing from the writing consultation model), improve tutors’ writing skills (borrowing from the writing workshop model), and gain fluency with the identification and application of components of the writing process, rhetorical concepts, and grammatical conventions (borrowing from the traditional classroom model). Because the tutors’ works are at the center of these conversations, reflection on the duality of their roles as tutor-learners and tutor-teachers emerges.
Triumphs & Challenges. As a regular agenda item, tutors share the details of one recent writing consultation that left them feeling triumphant as well as one that was particularly challenging. We spend about an hour hearing these reflections and discuss how to revise tutoring techniques for future consultations.

It is pedagogical nomenclature to say that teaching, like writing, is a “reflective practice”; however, I can say with certainty that tutor training is an environment where the rubber meets the road. My tutors concurred: “It’s the reflection that allows us to become better tutors.” Even if you have a challenging session, reflecting on it and asking for help will give you the skills to do something differently next time.

TUTORS AS THE FIRST LINK: A CHAIN OF REFLECTING

The ability to reflect before proceeding is the benchmark of an effectively trained writing tutor. Returning to Barkley and Major, this means that, at least in my work, the target is teaching my students how to reflect before charging through the challenge at hand. Armed with insights from their reflection, the tutors are able to more effectively choose individualized pedagogies to teach their writers. In other words, tutor reflection evolves into tutor metacognition as they adapt skills they’ve learned as tutor-learners and then put them to use as tutor-teachers. My tutor Leanna calls this evolution “a chain of reflecting.” I build reflection into tutor training, my tutors think metacognitively as they transform insights they’ve learned into teaching strategies, and writers then have tools of reflection at their disposal for both their writing projects and the challenges of everyday life. Reflection is the ultimate transferrable skill.

WORKS CITED

Barkley, Elizabeth F. and Claire H. Major. Learning Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty, Jossey-Bass, 2016.

North, Stephen M. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, Edited by Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood, Fourth Edition, Bedford St. Martin’s, 2011, pp. 44-58.

Metacognition and First-Year Students

by Megan Morrissey, Assistant Director of Student Success, Mount Saint Mary College

MY OWN INTRODUCTION TO METACOGNITION

“But, Meg, how am I supposed to remember this stuff?”

I heard this question quite frequently throughout my first year in 2012-2013 as a part-time Academic Coach, a new position for me in higher education. The core values of my job included:

developing holistic relationships with my students
assisting them in feeling more confident as a college student both academically and personally
aiding in their overall transition to college life

Armed and prepared with questions and exercises I thought would help my students open up to me, I used an intake form that posed logistical questions, like their contact information and intended major, as well as questions that spoke to their interests and self-awareness. However, what became apparent to me is that this generation of students was craving skills that would help them retain information in more meaningful ways, and my focus was to support them in becoming more metacognitive.

For my student meetings, my toolkit included ways to learn and many inventories that tested students’ learning styles. Although these strategies might have worked for an initial exam, giving them a good place to start, these were not enough to help them fully understand key concepts they would be seeing over and again, throughout the semester, and the rest of their college career. They used the skills I gave them to cram information and facts in for that first test, and then they would push all of it aside to do the same thing for the next exam, never truly immersing themselves in the material and understanding the concepts themselves.

THE FEAR OF ASKING QUESTIONS

[In high school] “I didn’t have to study. I paid attention and got good grades.”

Prevalent in secondary education, the “teach to the test” mentality that some educators have is understandable. Being evaluated by standardized test scores, teachers and administrators feel the need to educate their students on exactly what to expect. However, what happens when these students get to college and suddenly the answers to the exam are not so black and white? When they need to defend an answer instead of just memorizing a Power Point slide? When professors want them to immerse themselves in the material? What scared my students the most was their faculty encouraging them to ask questions in class and/or share their informed opinions on what they thought about the material.

Coupled with an intimidation of new faculty, many students face a real imposter syndrome coming into college and feel as if they do not truly belong there. My students have told me that they “don’t want to bother their professors” or are afraid of asking “dumb questions” and risk having faculty look at them in a negative way. My students also struggled with figuring out specifically how to word questions to faculty to get the clarification they need. In order to help them with this task, I would ask them in our meetings to explain what they might be having trouble with in class, asking my own questions to ensure I understood what they needed. Then, we would do a role-play:

My students play their professor, and I play the student.
They give me the absolute worst things that they think their faculty might say and I, in turn, show them how to navigate the situation and get their questions answered.
We then switch roles so that they can practice and anticipate their own reactions and responses.

HOW DO HIGH-ACHIEVING STUDENTS DO IT?

The role-playing exercises I used with my students to ease their anxiety in relating to their faculty led me to think more about how other higher achieving students were able to perform at such a caliber. A study from Iowa State University investigated academic achievement, achievement goals and beliefs about learning surrounding study strategies. The researchers concluded that competence, it seems, can be found both through performance, i.e. the results of an exam or quiz, and through reflection in comparing the actual results achieved to their own expectations (Geller et. al., 2018). Four patterns of achievement goals constitute the development of student competence:

They cultivate a personal sense of having learned the material.
They create the greatest link with metacognitive skills.
They monitor their own progress.
They adjust their study habits accordingly.

To achieve more, successful students engaged in metacognition, assessing the work they have already successfully retained, creating questions to more accurately understand the material they have yet to master and adjusting as needed. They also relied on study skills that included self-testing and planning out their study schedules to avoid procrastinating and cramming.

SUPPORTING STUDENTS WITH ANXIETY

In order to address a rise in the number of students with anxiety-related health issues, we deploy a reverse design in developing several strategies to help them cope. I assist them in the following tasks and activities:

creating a structured study schedule, working backwards from when their exam is, breaking down how much material they feel they can handle in a day, and
rehearsing, i.e. going to the actual classroom, when empty, and creating a practice test (using questions from their professors, textbooks and/or the internet), having them sit in their seat, and taking the practice test in the time they’re usually allotted. This activity not only facilitates the comprehension of the test material, but also anticipates the coping mechanisms they will use in case they get anxious, e.g. deep breathing, repeating a mantra they have created, and scanning the test to see what answers they absolutely know. This process of focusing awareness on their state of mind (specifically looking at when, where, how and why their anxiety peaks) and then using that to adjust their behaviors is another form of metacognition.

HOW CAN FACULTY HELP?

“If metacognition is the answer to being a more engaged and high achieving learner, what strategies can be utilized in class to better assist them in engaging in metacognition?”

Instructors can be powerful influencers by incorporating strategies in their courses and explicitly encouraging metacognitive practices. A study done by Wilson and Bai (2010) at the University of Central Florida concluded that educators need to make metacognition a priority in their lessons and demonstrate the flexibility of these learning strategies in order to show students that they need to reflect and think about how they are retaining information. These reflections can include the following:

active discussions and think-alouds
asking students to hand in questions anonymously before class—concepts, ideas, and points-of information—that they may not have understood from the previous lesson and/or homework assignment
incorporating reflective writing at the end of each class session and to guide them in making connections in what they have been learning

CONCLUSION

My students often come into my office during the first few days of their new journey at our institution. Their emotions are raw and they’re terrified of making any type of mistake. In bridging reflective practices with the development of students’ metacognitive skills, the power, for me, lies in asking purposeful, thoughtful questions and, thus, guiding them as they confront their fear of asking questions and learn to ask questions themselves. Metacognitive skills assist them in building self-confidence in and out of the classroom.

WORKS CITED

Geller, Jason, et al. “Study strategies and beliefs about learning as a function of academic achivement and achievement goals.” Memory (2018): 8. Article.

Wilson, Nancy S. and Haiyan Bai. “The relationships and impact of teachers’ metacognitive knowledge and pedagogical understandings of metacognition.” Metacognition Learning (2010): 20. Study.

Reflection Matters: Using Metacognition to Track a Moving Target

INTRODUCTION: A CALL FOR CONTEMPLATIVE PEDAGOGY

“Study: one must truly learn how to do it.”—Fr. Guido Vergauwen, OP

Everyday mitigating factors, such as distractions, pressures, insecurities and anxieties, can become manifest in the teaching-and-learning classroom climate on the parts of both instructors and students and, thus, can exacerbate the challenges that all already face in that place. However, the philosophy and praxis of contemplative pedagogy allows everyone to focus on the present and engage in the moment in order to address whatever needs tending to in that instant.

The practices of contemplative pedagogy creates a space within one’s intellectual and emotional reactions to course content and/or whatever informs one’s engagement therein—be it a spoken or written remark, a difficult topic, or an emerging theme. These practices bridge reflection (or contemplation), as the serious consideration of one’s thoughts, sentiments, and emotions, with metacognition, which highlights the awareness and understanding of one’s thought processes in the development of one’s skills sets. Integrating reflection with metacognition holds the potential in creating a rich teaching-and-learning environment.

AN ANALOGY: TARGET PRACTICE

In order to create and cultivate this kind of climate and culture, I draw upon Elizabeth F. Barkley and Claire H. Major’s analogy of target practice, in Learning Assessment Techniques (2015). Here, Barkley and Major differentiate Goals (broader plans) and Objectives (steps, methods, and tools in achieving goals) from Outcomes (the results from the execution and delivery of objectives)—all of which are applicable outside of higher education.

Teaching & Learning Goals: See the target.

Teaching & Learning Objectives: Aim for the target.

Teaching & Learning Outcomes: Hit the target.

While I can establish these determinants for any class in which I find myself, what is essential is that the students articulate their own determinants for any class in which they find themselves with me. Within the first week of classes, I deploy a set of assignments that connect reflection with metacognition:

a questionnaire for creating a climate for teaching and learning that asks the students various questions that account for best and worst practices on the parts of students and instructors;
a set of diagnostic paragraphs that require the students to reflect on their perceptions of self and others, and study habits and lifestyle issues that may affect their course;
guidelines that determine what failure and success looks and feels like from the students’ perspectives.

Here, allow me to extend Barkley and Major’s useful metaphor of target practice in emphasizing that the practice itself anticipates two goals: cultivating a sense of discipline through practice and hitting the target. In her Faculty Focus essay, “Enhancing Learning through Zest, Grit and Sweat,” Lolita Paff applies these terms to the teaching and learning opportunities and practices that inform our pedagogy (November 14, 2018).

zest equates with the cultivation of curiosity;
grit represents the tenacity in meeting a challenge;
sweat embodies the work ethic embodied in the intellectual labor itself.

For instructor and student alike, motivation itself informs zest, grit and sweat as part and parcel of one’s metacognitive reflection (or reflective metacognition) when assessing one’s failure or success in a course.

A TIME FOR CONTEMPLATION: PANDEMIC PEDAGOGY DURING COVID-19

“Listening is an encounter. And an encounter is like a crossroads—our own and that of the person who is listening to us.”—Sr. Jeanne-Marie de Menibus

Throughout the course of a semester, I adopt reflection with metacognition in order to gauge where we are with where we need to be by the end of the semester. On any given day, I check-in with the students to ask the following formative questions:

What works?
What does not work?
What needs to be amended, revised, and/or updated altogether?

However, this past March of 2020, the auspicious timing of COVID-19 with Spring Break necessitated The Pause and The Pivot in adapting our instructional delivery to the virtual arena—Pandemic Pedagogy—across all grade levels in the United States. Here, allow me to borrow the language of public health that guides all of us in this pandemic: the above questions, so typical for me at this juncture in every semester, compelled me to truly cull and glean—triage—what was and was not essential in the course in order to gauge where all of us—students, colleagues, family and friends, and myself—were at that time. Always, first and foremost, the need for authentic communication—a check-in—fosters a mindset that encourages simply asking questions, in a classroom, in a meeting, in a heightened conversation even as it also necessitates a slowing down to hold still and listen in contemplation.

Requisite course evaluations function as a Pandora’s Box of sorts insofar as their usefulness as authentic assessment tools in shaping one’s pedagogy while holding one accountable for their philosophy and praxis. Typically, and to counterbalance course evaluations, I deploy a closing commentary that asks student to reflect upon the course. This reflection, approached as a professional letter to me, runs the gamut of prompts that solicit specific pieces of information: the reading selections, the various assessment tools, e.g. exams (instructor- and student-created), writing assignments (low- and high stakes), and their own thoughts and suggestions for future students.

At the close of this semester, and in emulating practices across other American colleges and universities, I added a few formative questions in order to enhance the processes of metacognitive reflection (or reflective metacognition) in the following:

involvement or engagement
motivation or passion
a literacy skill honed throughout the semester
a new technological, practical, or communicational skill honed (in the virtual classroom)
a practice, an activity, or an idea for me to sustain (in an actual or virtual classroom)

CONCLUSION: THE GREAT PAUSE

How does one protest a problem without first mentioning it?—A Zen Koan

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.—Albert Einstein

In discerning what is and is not essential in a course, in going remote these days, the “business as usual” approach strikes me as intensely odd because The Old Normal was not always working, was not always effective, and was not always … good. Living in The New Normal has exposed the underpinnings and trappings of The Old Normal in such startling ways that for some of us tracking a moving set of targets—the curves of a pandemic, work-at home adjustments, updates in our pedagogical practices through technology—necessitates holding still in contemplation.

WORKS CITED

de Menibus, Jeanne-Marie, OP. “A Contemplative Listens and Teaches.” Towards the Intelligent Use of Liberty: Dominican Approaches in Education. Edited by Gabrielle Kelly, OP, and Kevin Saunders, OP. 2014. 99-102.

Vergauwen, Guido, OP. “The Charism of Study in the Education of Dominicans.” Towards the Intelligent Use of Liberty: Dominican Approaches in Education. Edited by Gabrielle Kelly, OP, and Kevin Saunders, OP. 2014. 89-98.

Integrating Reflection into Our Everyday Practices with Authenticity: A Discussion Series on Metacognition

In “Integrating Reflection into Our Everyday Practices with Authenticity: A Discussion Series on Metacognition,” educators across the Mount Saint Mary College discuss the place of reflection within their own professional development and that of their students in their processes of metacognition.

As Associate Professor of English and Director of the Honors Program, Marie-Therese C. Sulit offers the opening and closing pieces to this series, which meditate and deliberate over the current political, historical, social, and cultural climate of this pandemic during a national election year in America.

In her introductory piece, Marie-Therese C. Sulit draws upon the practices of contemplative pedagogy in order to conceptually bridge reflection with metacognition, particularly during COVID-19.

As Assistant Director of the Office for Student Success, Megan Morrissey discusses the training of academic coaches and coaching of students in facilitating the development of new study strategies for new achievement goals.

As Director of the Writing Center, Gina Evers considers the ways in which teaching and learning are woven together through reflection in her tutor training program.

As Assistant to the President in Mission Integration, Director of the Catholic and Dominican Institute, and Associate Professor of Philosophy, Charles Zola discusses the Four Pillars of Dominican Spirituality, particularly the role of reflection, through his work with the Dominican Scholars of Hope.

In her concluding piece, Marie-Therese C. Sulit discusses disputatio, a metacognitive method of investigation that not only embodies the Dominican Intellectual Tradition but also the reflective practices of contemplative pedagogy, as a means to explore the implications for curricular and campus reform at the Mount.

This miniseries explores the dimensions of metacognition across two tiers—within our classrooms and our offices—through our own professional development in tandem with our students and our colleagues: in short, why we do what we do and how we do it on an everyday basis.