By Antonio Gutierrez, Georgia Southern University

In my previous post, Metacognitive Strategies: Are They Trainable?, I explored the extent to which metacognitive strategies are teachable. In my own research on how well students monitor their comprehension during learning episodes, I discovered that students reported already having a repertoire of metacognitive strategies. Yet, I have often found, in my own teaching and interaction with undergraduate and even graduate students, that having metacognitive declarative knowledge of strategies is often not sufficient to promote students’ comprehension monitoring. For instance, students may already know to draw a diagram when they are attempting to learn new concepts. However, they may not know under which circumstances it is best to apply such a strategy. When students do not know when, where and why to apply a strategy, they may in fact be needlessly expending cognitive resources for little, to no, benefit with respect to learning.

Schraw and Dennison (1994) argued that metacognition is divided in to knowledge and regulation components. Knowledge is comprised of declarative knowledge about strategies, procedural knowledge of how to apply them, and conditional knowledge about when, where, and why to apply strategies given task demands. The more that I engage students, inside and beyond my classes, the more that I become convinced that the greatest lack in metacognitive knowledge lies not in declarative or procedural knowledge, but in conditional knowledge. Students clearly have a repository of strategies and procedures to apply them. However, they seem incapable of applying those strategies effectively given the demands of the learning tasks in which they engage. So how can we enhance students’ conditional knowledge? Let’s assume that Sally is attempting to learn the concept of natural selection in her biology lesson. As Sally attempts to connect what she is learning with prior knowledge in long-term memory, she realizes she may have misconceptions regarding natural selection. She also understands that she has a variety of strategies to assist her in navigating this difficult concept. However, she does not know or understand which strategy will optimize her learning of the concept. Thus, she resorts to a trial-and-error utilization of the strategies she thinks are “best” to help her. Here we see a clear example of lack of adequate conditional knowledge. Much time and cognitive effort can be saved if we enhance students’ conditional knowledge. Calibration (the relationship between task performance and a judgment about that performance; Boekaerts & Rozendaal, 2010; Keren, 1991), a related metacognitive process, but distinct from conditional knowledge, involves the comprehension monitoring element of metacognitive regulation. As I continue my scholarship to deepen my understanding of calibration, I wonder whether conditional knowledge and calibration are more closely associated than researchers assume.

In my recent research on calibration I have often asked why the body of literature on calibration is inconclusive in its findings with respect to the effects of metacognitive strategy training on calibration. For instance, some studies have found positive effects for calibration (e.g., Gutierrez & Schraw, in press; Nietfeld & Schraw, 2002) while others have demonstrated no effect for strategy training on calibration (e.g., Bol et al., 2005; Hacker et al., 2008). This inconclusive evidence has frustrated me not only as a scholar but as a teacher as well. I suspect that these mixed findings in the literature on calibration may be due in part because researchers on calibration have neglected to address participants’ metacognitive conditional knowledge. How can we possibly hope as instructors to improve students’ comprehension monitoring when the findings on the role of metacognitive strategy instruction plays on calibration are inconclusive? So, perhaps as researchers/scholars of metacognition we are asking the wrong questions? I argue that by improving students’ metacognitive conditional knowledge, we can improve their ability to more effectively determine what they know and what they do not know about their learning (i.e., better calibrate their performance judgments to their actual performance). If students cannot effectively apply strategies given the demands of the learning episode (a conditional knowledge issue) how can we expect them to adequately monitor their comprehension (a regulation of learning issue)? Perhaps the next line of inquiry should exclusively focus on the enhancement of students’ conditional knowledge?

References

Boekaerts, M., & Rozendaal, J. S. (2010). Using multiple calibration measures in order to capture the complex picture of what affects students’ accuracy of feeling of confidence. Learning and Instruction, 20(4), 372-382. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2009.03.002

Bol, L., Hacker, D. J., O’Shea, P., & Allen, D. (2005). The influence of overt practice, achievement level, and explanatory style on calibration accuracy, and performance. The Journal of Experimental Education, 73, 269-290.

Gutierrez, A. P., & Schraw, G. (in press). Effects of strategy training and incentives on students’ performance, confidence, and calibration. The Journal of Experimental Education: Learning, Instruction, and Cognition.

Hacker, D. J., Bol, L., & Bahbahani, K. (2008). Explaining calibration accuracy in classroom contexts: The effects of incentives, reflection, and explanatory style. Metacognition Learning, 3, 101-121.

Keren, G. (1991). Calibration and probability judgments: Conceptual and methodological issues. Acta Psychologica, 77(2), 217- 273. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0001-6918(91)90036-Y

Nietfeld, J. L., & Schraw, G. (2002). The effect of knowledge and strategy explanation on monitoring accuracy. Journal of Educational Research, 95, 131-142.

by Craig Nelson, Indiana University

This is my first post for this group. I have two goals. I want to illustrate some ways that we can use metacognition in everyday, non-academic situations. And I want to begin my posts with some reflections that are naïve. Naïve in the sense that I have not digested the work already on the blog and have not turned to the metacognitive literature. This will help me recognize later when other material really challenges my own ideas. We know from work in other contexts that making initial ideas explicit rather than tacit greatly facilitates cognitive change. In the present context, we could say that it activates metacognitive processing tools.

As always, a concrete example will make this clearer. Crouch and her associates (2004) asked “Classroom Demonstrations: Learning Tools or Entertainment?” They found that just doing a demonstration in physics had little effect on students’ understanding. It was simply entertainment. If you had a relevant misconception before the demonstration, you would probably still have it afterwards. Telling someone what is wrong with their misconception or even having them listen to a carefully constructed lecture or read a carefully constructed text is “futile,” their ideas are unlikely to change (Arons, 1976). Crouch et al. tried an alternative method. Before presenting the demonstration they asked students to write down what they thought would happen and then discuss their predictions briefly with their neighbors (thus activating prior conceptions and some relevant cognitive and metacognitive frameworks). Crouch and her associates then presented the demonstration and asked the students to compare what happened to their own predictions and to discuss the comparison with their neighbors. This led to significant conceptual change.

One of the most powerful metacognitive tools is exactly this. Ask yourself what a speaker or article or book or demonstration in class or real life is likely to say or show. Make explicit predictions. Whenever possible write them down. Then monitor the extent to which your predictions work out. Congratulate yourself when you are right and ask why you were wrong when they don’t.

A second powerful general metacognitive tool is related. Ask yourself how you do something. Then ask yourself what are some alternative ways you might do it and how you might decide which one to use in the future. For example: What pattern do you follow when you shop in the grocery store? Do you start with produce or end with produce? What else? How else might you systematically shop? And now the tough part: What criteria might favor each of the patterns? For example: Ending with heavy things such as dog-food might minimize your pushing effort but it might also risk crushing more delicate items. I try to minimize the temptation to buy junk food and processed carbohydrates generally. This means that in the grocery stores I visit, I generally shop the margins (produce, meat, diary) and avoid going through the aisles with canned food, sweets, chips and related foods unless I have something on my list that is found there. The bottom line is that for the things we do and the ways that we think, we should remember to ask, first, what are the alternatives and, second, what do we gain and lose by the ones that we choose.

I will close with two foreshadowings of points I expect to develop much more extensively later. Learning to think is a strange enterprise. Our best thinking at each point has limits that we cannot see and may not even be able to comprehend even if someone points them out to us. Misconceptions are a basic example. It is very hard to avoid taking any contradictory evidence we encounter and distorting it so that it seems to support our initial misconception (Grant, 2009). We have to make predictions or engage in strangely structured discussions (What would it take to convince you to switch to a new view if you held this misconception? Grant, 2009) or otherwise be effectively challenged. Seek out such challenges to even your most seemingly solid ideas.

This inability to see new ways of thinking applies even to the general way we perceive reality. Suppose that you think that knowledge in general and science and math in particular are based on objective truth and is likely to be eternally true. You then might have deep trouble with the titles and core ideas in for example, Kline’s Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, Ioannidis’ Why Most Published Research Findings Are False or Freedman’s Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. Even deeper challenges would be presented by, among many others, Anderson’s Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be, or Baxter Magolda’s Authoring Your Life. But each of these implicitly or explicitly presents a metacognitive framework that can be very powerful once we master it. So my final hint today for metacognitive awareness is to play Elbow’s believing game: See if you can understand how an author comes to his or her conclusions even when they seem very different from your own. Or as Russell put it, the rationale for studying the history of philosophy is to understand how an intelligent person ever came to believe such things as a tool for recognizing the limits of one’s own beliefs. We need to do this broadly, not just historically.

 References

Anderson, Walter Truett. 1990. Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-To-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World. Harpercollins.

Arons, Arnold. Arons, A. B. 1976. Cultivating the capacity for formal operations: Objectives and procedures in an introductory physical science course. American Journal of Physics 44: 834-838.

Baxter Magolda, Marcia B. 2009. Authoring Your Life: Developing an Internal Voice to Navigate Life’s Challenges. Stylus.

Crouch, Catherine H., A. P. Fagen, P. Callan and E. Mazur. 2004. “Classroom Demonstrations: Learning Tools or Entertainment?” American Journal of Physics 72:835-838.

Elbow, Peter. 1973. Writing Without Teachers. Oxford University Press.

Freedman, David. 2010. Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/?single_page=true (or http://bit.ly/11aAmt0).

Grant, B. W. 2009. Practitioner Research Improved My Students’ Understanding Of Evolution By Natural Selection In An Introductory Biology Course. Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology, 6(4). http://tiee.ecoed.net/vol/v6/research/grant/abstract.html

Ioannidis, John. 2005. Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Medicine August; 2(8): e124. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ (The most downloaded article in the history of PLoS Medicine.)

Kline, Morris. 1982. Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty. Oxford University Press.

Russell, Bertrand. 1945. A History of Western Philosophy. Simon & Schuster.

by Roman Taraban, Dmitrii Paniukov, and Michelle Kiser

Texas Tech University

In a recent post to the CASP (College Academic Support Programs) listserve, a skeptical developmental programs instructor asked why more attention can’t be given to remedial readers when designing instruction for developmental education. The instructor’s concern highlights the question:  What do we know about students who are not “college-ready” and who enroll in developmental coursework? In particular, where does metacognition fit into their development as skilled readers?

We know that reading ability, as measured by standardized instruments, like the SAT reading test for high-school students, is significantly associated with reading comprehension (Taraban, Rynearson, & Kerr, 2000). But what underlies this reading ability and can it be enhanced in college students?  Prior research revealed a several things.  As University students progress from freshman to senior years, they show small but significant growth in their use of metacognitive reading strategies (Taraban, 2011). This growth happens naturally – i.e., college students typically do not take courses that teach metacognition.  In trying to deliberately develop metacognitive reading strategies in developmental reading students, however, we found that the process can be slow and costly, but it can be done!  In a study of developmental college readers, it took roughly one semester of regular practice with a look-back reading strategy (Garner, 1987) in order to show significant improvement in reading comprehension (Taraban et al., 1997).  In addition to semester-long practice, the intervention was implemented in one-on-one tutoring, pointing to the instructional costs of bringing about detectable gains in reading skills in a remedial population.

Recently my colleagues and I had an opportunity to work with developmental readers who were enrolled in a developmental reading course at a major public research university. The students were primarily freshmen (mean number of completed credits = 16.7). We were primarily interested in three questions: 1) Could a teacher-implemented intervention improve these students’ comprehension and retention of ideas from expository texts? 2) Which metacognitive reading strategies did these students apply on their own? and 3) Was students’ use of metacognitive strategies associated with better retention of information?

The students were asked to read two expository passages and to recall as much as they could either immediately or after a 48-hour delay. They were told that they would be asked later to recall the information from the texts, but they were not prompted to apply any specific learning strategies. The two texts used for the study were each about 250 words in length and had an average Flesch-Kincaid readability score of 8.2 grade level. The passages contained 30 idea units each. Idea units are simple units of meaning derived from the text, and here were used to score the recall data. The participants read and studied one of the passages without interruption (Uninterrupted Condition), and they read and studied one of the passages paragraph-by-paragraph, and then all together (Segmented Condition).  Participants spent an equal amount of total time (10 minutes) reading and studying each of the texts. After they recalled the information, we asked them to report the strategies they used to learn the information. The specific self-reported strategies were organized into six types, as shown in Table 1. To score the strategy-use data, participants were given credit for multiple strategy types, but not for repetitions of the same strategy for the same text.

 TABLE 1: Key Types of Self-Reported Strategies

1. REPETITION: Re-Reading; Memorize; Repetition
2. FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC ELEMENTS: Key words; Key concepts; Grouping terms or sentences; Identifying related concepts; Parts that stood out; Parts that were difficult
3. SELF TESTING: Summarizing; Recalling; Quizzing self; Forming acronyms
4. GENERATING COGNITIVE ELABORATIONS: Activating prior knowledge; Recalling related experiences; Re-explaining parts of the text in other ways; Comparing and contrasting ideas; Using analogies; Using mental imagery
5. SEGMENTATION: Grouping sentences for purposes of study; Divide by paragraph
6. GENERAL: Read slowly; Read thoroughly; Concentrate; Understand passage

Regression analyses were conducted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the reading approach (Uninterupted vs Segmented) in conjunction with participants’ self-reported use of the six strategy types (see Table 1). Turning to the immediate test, the reading approach mattered. When participants read and studied a segmented text they had significantly higher recall of idea units (M = 11.64) compared to non-segmented text (M = 7.93). Further, all of the participants reported using reading strategies.  Of the six strategy types, participants’ application of FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC ELEMENTS during reading was strongly associated with better recall of information from the text, and REPETITION was also important.  Considering the delayed test next, the reading approach used for the text that was read two days earlier did not matter.  However, using the strategy type SELF TESTING during reading was strongly associated with better recall, and FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC ELEMENTS was also helpful.

To address our skeptical developmental instructor, our data suggest that developmental reading instructors can structure how students process information in order to increase the number of ideas students retain, for follow-up activities like inferencing and brainstorming. The data also showed that developmental readers naturally use metacognitive reading strategies to boost their retention of information both immediately and at a delay.  Interestingly, there is no single best strategy.  Rather, FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC ELEMENTS during reading is most effective for immediate retention and SELF-TESTING during reading is most effective for longer-term retention.  Developmental students’ natural disposition to apply strategies may open opportunities for instructors to further guide, enhance, and channel these metacognitive skills to better benefit students.  What is heartening in these data is the finding that these academically-challenged students self-initiate metacognitive activities to monitor and regulate their study behaviors in order to enhance their academic performance.

References

Garner, R. (1987). Metacognition and reading comprehension. Norword, NJ: Ablex.

Taraban, R. (2011). Information fluency growth through engineering curricula: Analysis of students’ text-processing skills and beliefs. Journal of Engineering Education, 100(2), 397-416.

Taraban, R., Becton, S., Shufeldt, M., Stirling, T., Johnson, M., & Childers, K. (1997). Developing underprepared college students’ question-answering skills. Journal of Developmental Education, 21 (1), 20-22, 24, 26, 28.

Taraban, R., Rynearson, K., & Kerr, M. (2000). College students’ academic performance and self-reports of comprehension strategy use. Journal of Reading Psychology, 21, 283-308.

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.

James Rhem, Executive Editor, The National Teaching & Learning FORUM

“When I began The National Teaching & Learning FORUM” over twenty years ago, almost everyone in faculty development had heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy. I hadn’t since I was new to this beat; so I went to the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Library and looked for it. There on the shelf was what they were talking about, the taxonomy of cognition, but right beside it was something that interested me as much if not more, the taxonomy of affect. No one (or at least no one I knew) had heard of this taxonomy or the one on the psychomotor domain that followed the one on affect. I began quietly beating the drum for an awareness of affect back in 1995 (according to a search of my old email). That was the same year Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence” came out; so I suspected I’d stumbled onto what would become a cresting wave. That wave has grown, but it’s still heading toward a crest.

I go into all this because I think I can already see the waves of insight and meaningful rethinking of teaching and learning that will follow. Metacognition as a concept has been around for a long time, but coming to understand it and its place in learning (and thus is effective teaching) is a new thing. It’s something I’ve been increasingly covering in the FORUM and something I plan on continuing to cover. Indeed, NTLF created a series of small books with Stylus a few years back and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that one of the titles in that series is about metacognition (Using Reflection and Metacognition to Improve Student Learning: Across the Disciplines, Across the Academy Edited by Matthew Kaplan ,  Naomi Silver ,  Danielle LaVaque-Manty ,  Deborah Meizlish Foreword by James Rhem   https://sty.presswarehouse.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=298776 ) 

I’ve linked two recent articles from the FORUM on metacognition. And I invite readers of this list who may have written (or plan to write) articles on metacognition and teaching and learning to submit material to me for wider distribution.  

1. Metacognitive Skills – why bother (and how)? by Carol Hostetter and Leah Savion at Indiana University

2. Metacognition and Disciplinary Thinking by Matt Fisher at Saint Vincent College

So what’s the next wave after metacognition?  The psychomotor domain. Count on it. 

James Rhem, Executive Editor, The National Teaching & Learning FORUM

By Aaron S. Richmond, Metropolitan State University of Denver

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

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

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

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

Why Engage in Meta-Teaching Practices?

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

Meta-Teaching Strategies Used to Improve Metacognition

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

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

Closing Meta-Remarks

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

by David Westmoreland, U.S. Air Force Academy*

Teachers of science increasingly find themselves entangled in social controversies. This is true for physicists teaching about the origin of matter, geologists discussing the age of the planet, biologists teaching evolution, and climatologists teaching about global warming. In most cases, the science is relatively clear, and there is little controversy within the scientific community.

In my field of biology, for example, a significant percentage of students enter the classroom with preconceived notions about the theory of evolution. Public perception of this field has changed little in the past 30 years. In the most recent poll, 42% of Americans rejected evolution outright, a figure that has fluctuated between 40 and 47% for more than 3 decades (Newport 2014). Among college-educated Americans, there is greater acceptance of evolution as valid science; in 2014, about 25% espoused a creationist perspective. Still, it is surprising that one-fourth of college-educated Americans reject evolution, given the expansive effort to incorporate evolutionary biology into public education and the positive presentation of evolution in the media.

Why? One possibility is that we have we have failed to use the right approach to overcome a socially derived obstacle to learning. In undergraduate biology courses, the concept of evolution is often introduced in concert with empirical evidence supporting it, with the expectation that students will be open to ideas that, in fact, they are resistant to learn.
My research on cadets at the Air Force Academy indicates a barrier to learning evolution by about 25% of students. I sampled 147 cadet volunteers who self-categorized as creationists (rejecting evolution), theistic evolutionists (acknowledging evolutionary change with some degree of divine influence) or atheistic evolutionists (acknowledging evolution by natural processes alone). Each student responded to surveys that quantified (a) their knowledge of the subject, and (b) their perspective on evolution as science, in addition to demographic information. The results are intriguing.

Knowledge Test Score

Despite having a similar educational background to the other groups, creationists’ knowledge scores were roughly half those of the other groups. The difference is statistically significant.

One might think that, if creationist students were more open to learning evolutionary concepts, their acceptance of evolution might rise. But think again – the correlation of knowledge and perception is not so clear. Knowledge is significantly related to acceptance for theistic and atheistic evolutionists, but not for creationists. For them, learning facts does not appear to influence perception.

This is where metacognition comes in. In a review of 26 research articles on undergraduates’ knowledge and acceptance of evolution, Lloyd-Strovas and Bernal (2012) concluded that acceptance is related to student understanding of the nature of science – that is, science as a cultural and intellectual endeavor. When students learn that science should not be regarded as a repository of absolute truth, but rather, an ongoing effort to understand and explain the natural world, the barrier to learning is breached. As emphasized by Lombrozo et al. (2008): “…Students may be more likely to accept evolution if they understand that a scientific theory is provisional but reliable, that scientists employ diverse methods for testing scientific claims, and that relating data to theory can require inference and interpretation.”

In other words, instructors must prepare the field before engaging students in social controversies. Otherwise, students are more likely to engage in social cognition – the tendency to form opinions on the basis of social identity (Bloom and Weisberg 2007). If an individual strongly identifies herself as belonging to a group that holds a common opinion on a topic, she is likely to express that opinion even in the absence of competent understanding of the subject. For such persons, empirical information is likely to be ignored due to a fundamental desire to reinforce a social network. Consider, for example, the strong relationship between political affiliation and skepticism about global warming.

College courses are no strangers to controversy. We often engage students in debate, and have them present and defend positions. What is missing, I think, is pushing our students to critically evaluate the processes they used to form the opinions in the first place.

References

Bloom, P., and D. S. Weisberg. (2007). Childhood origins of adult resistance to science. Science 316: 996-997.

Lloyd-Strovas, J. D., and X. E. Bernal. (2012). A review of undergraduate evolution education in U.S. universities: building a unifying framework. Evolution Education Outreach 5: 453–465.

Lombrozo, T., A. Thanukos, and M. Weisberg. (2008). The importance of understanding the nature of science for accepting evolution. Evolution Education Outreach 1: 290-298.

Newport, F. (2014, June 2). In U.S., 42% believe creationist view of human origins. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com

* 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.