Metacognitive Awareness and Academic Achievement in College Students

“Schraw and Dennison (1994) developed the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) to assess metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation which they referred to as the knowledge of cognition factor and the regulation of cognition factor.” Young and Fry’s article discusses the correlations between the final course grades, GPS and MAI. (Metacognitive Awareness Inventory) Findings show that the scores on the MAI greatly differ between undergraduate and graduate students.

Young, A., & Fry, J. (2012). Metacognitive awareness and academic achievement in college students. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8(2), 1-10.

The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in Learning, Teaching, and Assessing

“Metacognitive knowledge is a new category of knowledge in the revised Taxonomy.” According to Pintrich, strategic knowledge, self-knowledge and the knowledge of tasks and their contexts are the three important types of metacognitive knowledge.

Paul R. Pintrich (2002) The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in Learning, Teaching, and

Assessing, Theory Into Practice, 41:4, 219-225, DOI: 10.1207/s15430421tip4104_3

The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in Learning, Teaching, and Assessing

You may also read one of the blog entries that relates to this article by clicking here

Student Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in the College Classroom

This chapter talks about the problems in students’ motivation to learn and how self-regulated learning can provide some insights to issues such as, how come students care more about their grades than learning the disciplinary content of their courses?, why do students wait until the last minute to fulfill the obligations of their courses such as studying for an exam or writing a paper?

R.P. Perry and J.C. Smart (eds.), The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: An Evidence-Based Perspective, 731–810. Pintrich and Zusho: Student Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in the Classroom

Student Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in the College Classroom

Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning Constructs

This article contains findings from several different studies, and the “Findings indicated convergence of self-report measures of metacognition, significant correlations between metacognition and academic monitoring, negative correlations between self-reported metacognition and accuracy ratings, and positive correlations between metacognition and strategy use and metacognition and motivation.”

Rayne A. Sperling, Bruce C. Howard, Richard Staley & Nelson DuBois

(2004) Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning Constructs, Educational Research and

Evaluation: An International Journal on Theory and Practice, 10:2, 117-139

Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning Constructs

Metacognition About Course Design: Creating a Paradigm Shift

By Charity S. Peak, Ph.D., U. S. Air Force Academy

Recent studies have sparked a national conversation about the lack of accountability for student learning in higher education. Our Underachieving Colleges (Bok, 2006) and Academically Adrift (Arum & Roksa, 2011) are just two examples of scathing reviews of how colleges are falling short. Increasingly, colleges and universities are being asked to demonstrate their value, particularly during a recession.

The core reason for not achieving greater success is a lack of focus on student learning. Despite all that we know today, institutions continue to concentrate on belongingness, construction, and the almighty research dollar rather than on whether students are graduating with substantial learning gains. Additionally, most faculty believe they are supporting student learning. They can even recite many of the basic learning principles that are foundational to teaching, such as the value of relevance. However, many faculty are unsure about how to apply these principles to their own classes. Like our students, they need sufficient practice and feedback in order to be able to create well-designed courses that improve student learning.

One way to attack this issue is to provide opportunities for metacognition about course design, not merely lesson planning. If metacognition includes thinking about how one performs a skill (Schraw, 1998), then awareness and knowledge about how to design a course are critical for enhancing student learning. Are there clearly articulated learning goals for the course? Do the assessments align with those learning goals? What learning experiences will support student success on those assessments by providing ample practice and feedback?

Jones, Noyd, and Sagendorf (2014) propose institutional course design retreats as a method for creating metacognition about student learning. Through a series of steps and collaboration with peers, faculty might simply set out to design their courses, but often become transformed by the experience. For many years, the authors have facilitated this six-step process for course design, but it is now available for others to use in Building a Pathway for Student Learning: A How-To Guide to Course Design. The book offers a research-based course design process that can be applied to all disciplines and a variety of settings. Step-by-step, faculty walk through designing a course using a series of self-paced workboxes:

Student Learning Factors – How do your students’ characteristics impact their learning?
Learning Goals – What do you want students to know and be able to do as a result of taking your course?
Assessment – How will you know the extent to which students accomplished your learning goals?
Proficiencies – What knowledge, skills, and attitudes will students need to accomplish the learning goals?
Learning Experiences – Which learning experiences (outside and inside class time) support the development of proficiencies and accomplishment of your goals?
Feedback & Improvement – How will students receive useful feedback on their work so they can make the necessary adjustments to accomplish your goals?

The culmination of work is a one-page flow chart of the course – a map to student learning. This flow chart offers a metacognitive pathway through the course for students as well as faculty teaching the course. As with all learning, and perhaps most importantly, faculty gain a new awareness of who should be at the center of their course – the learner! Through metacognition about student learning, faculty are able to intentionally design college experiences that matter rather than passive lectures or fun-but-tangential activities that do not achieve the learning gains we most need in higher education.

Without appropriate support and metacognition, faculty will continue to design courses focused on content rather than learning. While the approach that Jones, Noyd and Sagendorf (2014) use seemingly addresses an instructor’s main goal in preparation of a new semester – finishing the syllabus – faculty become transformed by how to operationalize a learning-centered philosophy, which they will carry with them into all of their lessons. Through a process of metacognition about student learning, faculty begin to experience the paradigm shift about which Barr and Tagg (1995) dreamed twenty years ago.

References:

Arum, R., & Roksa, J. (2011). Academically adrift: Limited learning on college campuses. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Barr, R. B., & Tagg, J. (Nov-Dec 1995). From teaching to learning: A new paradigm for undergraduate education. Change, 27(6), 12-26.

Bok, D. (2006). Our underachieving colleges: A candid look at how much students learn and why they should be learning more. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jones, S. K., Noyd, R. K., & Sagendorf, K. S. (2014). Building a pathway to student learning: A how-to guide to course design. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Schraw, G. (1998). Promoting general metacognitive awareness. Instructional Science, 26, 113-125.

Metacognitive Development in Professional Educators

Stewart, Cooper and Moulding investigate adult metacognition development, specifically comparing pre-service teachers and practicing teachers. They used the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory and found that metacognition improves significantly with age and with years of teaching experience, but not with gender or level of teaching (Pre-K though post-secondary ed levels).

Stewart, P. W., Cooper. S. S., & Moulding, L. R. (2007). Metacognitive development in professional educators. The Researcher, 21(1), 32-40.

Teacher-led Self-analysis of Teaching

Clinical Supervision is a model of supervisor (or peer) review that stresses the benefits of a teacher-led self-analysis of teaching in the post-conference versus a conference dominated by the judgments of the supervisor. Through self-reflection, teachers are challenged to use metacognitive processes to determine the effects of their teaching decisions and actions on student learning. The Clinical Supervision model is equally applicable to all levels of schooling and all disciplines. This video walks you through the process.

Habits of Mind

by Arthur L. Costa, Ed. D. (Professor Emeritus, California State University, Sacramento). This paper summarizes 16 attributes of what human beings do when they behave intelligently, referred to as Habits of Mind. Metacognition is the 5th mentioned (see a nice summary of all 16 on the final page). Dr. Costa points out that these “Habits of Mind transcend all subject matters commonly taught in school. They are characteristic of peak performers whether they are in homes, schools, athletic fields,organizations, the military, governments, churches or corporations.”

Reciprocal Peer Coaching for Self-Reflection, Anyone?

By Cynthia Desrochers, California State University Northridge

I once joked with my then university president that I’d seen more faculty teach in their classrooms than she had. She nodded in agreement. I should have added that I’d seen more than the AVP for Faculty Affairs, all personnel committees, deans, or chairpersons. For some reason, university teaching is done behind closed doors, no peering in on peers unless for personnel reviews. We attempted to change that at CSU Northridge when I directed their faculty development center from 1996-2005. Our Faculty Reciprocal Peer Coaching program typically drew a dozen or more cross-college dyads over the dozen semesters it was in existence. The program’s main goal was teacher self-reflection.

I believe I first saw the term peer coaching when reading a short publication by Joyce and Showers (1983). What stuck me was their assertion that to have any new complex teaching innovation become part of one’s teaching repertoire required four steps: 1) understanding the theory/knowledge base undergirding the innovation, 2) observing an expert who is modeling how to do the innovation, 3) practicing the innovation in a controlled setting with coaching (e.g., micro-teaching in a workshop) and 4) practicing the innovation in one’s own classroom with coaching. They maintained that without all four steps, the innovation taught in a workshop would likely not be implemented in the classroom. Having spent much of my life teaching workshops about using teaching innovations, these steps became my guide, and I still use them today. In addition, after many years of coaching student teachers at UCLA’s Lab School, I realized that they were more likely to apply teaching alternatives that they identified and reflected upon in the post-conference than ones that I singled out. That is, they learned more from using metacognitive practices than from my direct instruction, so I began formulating some of the thoughts summarized below.

Fast forward many years to this past year, where I co-facilitated a yearlong eight-member Faculty Learning Community (FLC) focused on implementing the following Five Gears for Activating Learning: Motivating Learning, Organizing Knowledge, Connecting Prior Knowledge, Practicing with Feedback, and Developing Mastery [see previous blog]. With this FLC, we resurrected peer coaching on a voluntary basis in order to promote conscious use of the Five Gears in teaching. All eight FLC members not only volunteered to pair up for reciprocal coaching of one another, but they were eager to do so.

I was asked by one faculty member why is it called coaching, because an athletic coach often tells players what to do, versus helping them self-reflect. I responded that it’s because Joyce and Showers’ study looked at the research on training athletes and what that required for skill transfer. They showed the need for many practice sessions combined with coaching in order to achieve mastery of any new complex move, be it on the playing field or in the classroom. However, their point of confusion was noted, so now I refer to the process as Reciprocal Peer Coaching for Self-Reflection. This reflective type of peer coaching applies to cross-college faculty dyads who are seeking to more readily apply a new teaching innovation.

Reciprocal Peer Coaching for Self-Refection applies all or some of the five phases of the Clinical Supervision model described by Goldhammer(1969), which include: pre-observation conference, observation and data collection, data analysis and strategy, post-observation conference, and post-conference analysis. However, it is in the post-conference phase where much of the teacher self-reflection occurs and where the coach can benefit from an understanding of post-conference messages.

Prior to turning our FLC members loose to peer coach, we held a practicum on how to do it. And true to my statement above, I applied Joyce and Showers’ first three steps in our practicum (i.e., I explained the theory behind peer coaching, modeled peer coaching, and then provided micro-practice of a videotaped lesson taught by one of our FLC members). But in the micro-practice, right out of the gate, faculty coaches began telling the teacher how she used the Five Gears versus prompting her to reflect upon her own use first. Although I gently provided feedback in an attempt to redirect the post-conferences from telling to asking, it was a reminder of how firmly ingrained this default position has become with faculty, where the person observing a lesson takes charge and provides all the answers when conducting the post-conference. The reasons for this may include 1)prior practice as supervisors who are typically charged with this role, 2) the need to show their analytic prowess, or 3) the desire to give the teacher a break from doing all the talking. Whatever the reason, we want the teacher doing the reflective analysis of her own teaching and growing those dendrites as a result.

After this experience with our FLC, I crafted the conference-message matrix below and included conversation-starter prompts. Granted, I may have over-simplified the process, but it illustrates key elements for promoting Reciprocal Peer Coaching for Self-Reflection. Note that the matrix is arranged into four types of conference messages: successful and unsuccessful teaching-learning situations, where the teacher identifies the topic of conversation after being prompted by the coach (messages #1 and #3) and successful and unsuccessful teaching-learning situations, where the coach identifies the topic of conversation after being prompted by the teacher (messages #2 and #4). The goal of Reciprocal Peer Coaching for Self-Reflection is best achieved when the balance of the post-conference contains teacher self-reflection; hence, messages #1 and #3 should dominate the total post-conference conversation. Although the order of messages #1 through #4 is a judgment call, starting with message #1permits the teacher to take the lead in identifying and reflecting upon her conscious use of the Gears and their outcome –using her metacognition—versus listening passively to the coach. An exception to beginning with message #1 may be that the teacher is too timid to sing her own praises, and in this instance the coach may begin with message #2 when this reluctance becomes apparent. Note further that this model puts the teacher squarely in the driver’s seat throughout the entire post-conference; this is particularly important when it comes to message #4, which is often a sensitive discussion of unsuccessful teaching practices. If the teacher doesn’t want another’s critique at this time, she is told not to initiate message #4, and the coach is cautioned to abide this decision.

The numbered points under each of the four types of messages are useful components for discussion during each message in order to further cement an understanding of which Gear is being used and its value for promoting student learning: 1) Identifying the teaching action from the specific objective data collected by the coach (e.g., written, video, or audio) helps to isolate the cause-effect teaching episode under discussion and its effect on student learning. 2) Naming the Gear (or naming any term associated with the innovating being practiced) increases our in-common teaching vocabulary, which is considered useful for any profession. 3) Discussing the generalization about how the Gear helps students learn reiterates its purpose, fostering motivation to use it appropriately. And 4) crafting together alternative teaching-learning practices for next time expands the teacher’s repertoire.

The FLC faculty reported that their classroom Reciprocal Peer Coaching for Self-Reflection sessions were a success. Specifically, they indicated that they used the Five Gears more consciously after discussing them during the post-conference; that the Five Gears were beginning to become part of their teaching vocabulary; and that they were using the Five Gears more automatically during instruction. Moreover, unique to message #2, it provided the benefit of having one’s coach identify a teacher’s unconscious use of the Five Gears, increasing the teacher’s awareness of themselves as learners of an innovation, all of which serve to increase metacognition.

When reflecting upon how we might assist faculty in implementing the most promising research-based teaching-learning innovations, I see a system where every few years we allot reassigned time for faculty to engage in Reciprocal Peer Coaching for Self-Reflection.

References

Goldhammer, R. (1969). Clinical supervision. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Joyce, B. & Showers, B. (1983). Power in staff development though research on training. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Exploring the relationship between awareness, self-regulation, and metacognition

Thinking about thinking, awareness, and self-regulation Share on Xby John Draeger (SUNY Buffalo State)

Recent blog posts have considered the nature of metacognition and metacognitive instruction. Lauren Scharff, for example, defines metacognition as “the intentional and ongoing interaction between awareness and self-regulation” (Scharff, 2015). This post explores the relationship between the elements of this definition.

Scharff observes that a person can recognize that a pedagogical strategy isn’t working without changing her behavior (e.g., someone doesn’t change because she is unaware of alternative strategies) and a person can change her behavior without monitoring its efficacy (e.g., someone tries a technique that she heard about in a workshop without thinking through whether the technique makes sense within a particular learning environment). Scharff argues that a person engaging in metacognition will change her behavior when she recognizes that a change is needed. She will be intentional about when and how to make that change. And she will continue the new behavior only if there’s reason to believe that it is the achieving the desired result. Metacognition, therefore, can be found in the interaction between awareness and self-regulated action. Moreover, because learning environments are fluid, the interaction between awareness and self-regulation must be ongoing. This suggests that awareness and self-regulation are necessary for metacognition.

In response, I offered what might seem to be a contrary view (Draeger, 2015). I argued that the term ‘metacognition’ is vague in two ways. First, it is composed of overlapping sub-elements. Second, each of these sub-elements falls along a continuum. For example, metacognitive instructors can be more (or less) intentional, more (or less) informed about evidence-based practice, more (or less) likely to have alternative strategies ready to hand, and more (or less) nimble with regards to when and how to shift strategies based on their “in the moment” awareness of student need. Sub-elements are neither individually necessary nor jointly sufficient for a full characterization of metacognition. Rather, a practice is metacognitive if it has “enough” of the sub-elements and they are far “enough” along the various continua.

Scharff helpfully suggests that metacognition must involve both awareness and action. I would add that awareness can be divided into sub-elements (e.g., reflection, mindfulness, self-monitoring, self-knowledge) and behavior can be divided into sub-elements (e.g., self-regulation, collective actions, institutional mandates). While I suspect that no one of the sub-elements is individually necessary for metacognition, Scharff has correctly identified two broad clusters of elements that are required for metacognition.

As I continue to think through the relationship between awareness and self-regulation, I am reminded of an analogy between physical exercise and intellectual growth. As I have said in a previous post, I am a gym rat. Among other things, I swim several times a week. A few years ago, however, I noticed that my stroke needed refinement. So, I contacted a swimming instructor. She found a handful of areas where I could improve, including my kick and the angle of my arms. As I worked on these items, it was often helpful to focus on my kick without worrying about the angle of my arms and vice versa. With time and effort, I got gradually better. Because my kick had been atrocious, focusing on that one area resulted in dramatic improvement. Because my arm angle hadn’t been all that bad, improvements were far less dramatic. Working on my kick and my arm angle combined to make me a better swimmer. Separating the various elements of my stroke allowed me to identify areas for improvement and allowed me to tackle my problem areas without feeling overwhelmed. However, even after working on the parts, I found that I still needed to put it together. Eventually, I found a swim rhythm that brought elements into alignment.

Likewise, it is often useful to separate elements of our pedagogical practice (e.g., awareness, self-regulation) because separation allows us identify and target areas in need of improvement. If a person knows what she is doing isn’t working but doesn’t know what else to do, then she might focus on identifying alternative strategies. If a person knows of alternative strategies but does not know when or how to use them, then she might focus on her “in the moment awareness” and her ability to shift to new strategies as needed during class. Focusing on the one element can give a person something concrete to work on without feeling overwhelmed by all the other moving parts. The separation is useful, but it is also somewhat artificial. By analogy, my kick and my arm angle are elements of my swim stroke, but they are also part of an interrelated process. While it is important to improve the parts, the ultimate goal is finding a way to integrate the changes into an effective whole. Metacognitive instructors seek to become more explicit, more intentional, more informed about evidence-based practice, and better able to make “in the moment” adjustments. Focusing on each of these elements can improve practice. Separating these elements can be useful, but somewhat artificial because the ultimate goal is finding a way to integrate these elements into an effective whole.

References

Draeger, John (2015). “So what if ‘metacognition’ is vague!” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/so-what-if-metacognition-is-vague/

Scharff, Lauren (2015). “What do we mean by ‘metacognitive instruction?” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/what-do-we-mean-by-metacognitive-instruction/

So what if ‘metacognition’ is vague!

by John Draeger (SUNY Buffalo State)

When Lauren Scharff invited me to join Improve with Metacognition last year, I was only vaguely aware of what ‘metacognition’ meant. As a philosopher, I knew about various models of critical thinking and I had some inkling that metacognition was something more than critical thought, but I could not have characterized the extra bit. In her post last week, Scharff shared a working definition of ‘metacognitive instruction’ developed by a group of us involved as co-investigators on a project (Scharff, 2015). She suggested that it is the “intentional and ongoing interaction between awareness and self-regulation.” This is better than anything I had a year ago, but I want to push the dialogue further.

I’d like to take a step back to consider the conceptual nature of metacognition by applying an approach in legal philosophy used to analyze terms with conceptual vagueness. While clarity is desirable, Jeremy Waldron argues that there are limits to the level of precision that legal discourse can achieve (Waldron, 1994). This is not an invitation to be sloppy, but rather an acknowledgement that certain legal concepts are inescapably vague. According to Waldron, a concept can be vague in at least two ways. First, particular instantiations can fall along a continuum (e.g., actions can be more or less reckless, negligent, excessive, unreasonable). Second, some concepts can be understood in terms of overlapping features. Democracies, for example, can be characterized by some combination of formal laws, informal patterns of participation, shared history, common values, and collective purpose. These features are neither individually necessary nor jointly sufficient for a full characterization of the concept. Rather, a system of government counts as democratic if it has “enough” of the features. A particular democratic system may look very different from its democratic neighbor. This is in part because particular systems will instantiate the features differently and in part because particular systems might be missing some feature altogether. Moreover, democratic systems can share features with other forms of government (e.g., formal laws, common values, and collective purpose) without there being a clear boundary between democratic and non-democratic forms of government. According to Waldron, there can be vagueness within the concept of democracy itself and in the boundaries between it and related concepts.

While some might worry that the vagueness of legal concepts is a problem for legal discourse, Waldron argues that the lack of precision is desirable because it promotes dialogue. For instance, when considering whether some particular instance of forceful policing should be considered ‘excessive,’ we must consider the conditions under which force is justified and the limits of acceptability. Answering these questions will require exploring the nature of justice, civil rights, and public safety. Dialogue is valuable, in Waldron’s view, because it brings clarity to a broad constellation of legal issues even though clarity about any one of the constituents requires thinking carefully about the other elements in the constellation.

Is ‘metacognition’ vague in the ways that legal concepts can be vague? To answer this question, consider some elements in the metacognitive constellation as described by our regular Improve with Metacognition blog contributors. Self-assessment, for example, is feature of metacognition (Fleisher, 2014, Nuhfer, 2014). Note, however, that it is vague. First, self-assessments may fall along a continuum (e.g., students and instructors can be more or less accurate in their self-assessments). Second, self-assessment is composed of a variety of activities (e.g., predicting exam scores, tracking gains in performance, understanding personal weak spots and understanding one’s own level of confidence, motivation, and interest). These activities are neither individually necessary nor jointly sufficient for a full characterization of self-assessment. Rather, students or instructors are engaged in self-assessment if they engage in “enough” of these activities. Combining these two forms of vagueness, each of the overlapping features can themselves fall along a continuum (e.g., more or less accurate at tracking performance or understanding motivations). Moreover, self-assessment shares features with other related concepts such as self-testing (Taraban, Paniukov, and Kiser, 2014), mindfulness (Was, 2014), calibration (Gutierrez, 2014), and growth mindsets (Peak, 2015). All are part of the metacognitive constellation of concepts. Each of these concepts is individually vague in both senses described above and the boundaries between them are inescapably fuzzy. Turning to Scharff’s description of metacognitive instruction, all four constituent elements (i.e. ‘intentional,’ ‘ongoing interaction,’ ‘awareness,’ and ‘self-regulation’) are also vague in both senses described above. Thus, I believe that ‘metacognition’ is vague in the ways legal concepts are vague. However, if Waldron is right about the benefits of discussing and grappling with vague legal concepts (and I think he is) and if the analogy between vague concepts and the term ‘metacognition’ holds (and I think it does), then vagueness in this case should be perceived as desirable because it facilitates broad dialogue about teaching and learning.

As Improve with Metacognition celebrates its first year birthday, I want to thank all those who have contributed to the conversation so far. Despite the variety of perspectives, each contribution helps us think more carefully about what we are doing and why. The ongoing dialogue can improve our metacognitive skills and enhance our teaching and learning. As we move into our second year, I hope we can continue exploring the rich the nature of the metacognitive constellation of ideas.

References

Fleisher, Steven (2014). “Self-assessment, it’s a good thing to do.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/self-assessment-its-a-good-thing-to-do/

Gutierrez, Antonio (2014). “Comprehension monitoring: the role of conditional knowledge.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/comprehension-monitoring-the-role-of-conditional-knowledge/

Nuhfer, Ed (2014). “Self-Assessment and the affective quality of metacognition Part 1 of 2.”Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/self-assessment-and-the-affective-quality-of-metacognition-part-1-of-2/

Peak, Charity (2015). “Linking mindset to metacognition.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/linking-mindset-metacognition/

Scharff, Lauren (2015). “What do we mean by ‘metacognitive instruction’?” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/what-do-we-mean-by-metacognitive-instruction/

Taraban, Roman, Paniukov, Dmitrii, and Kiser, Michelle (2014). “What metacognitive skills do developmental college readers need? Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/what-metacognitive-skills-do-developmental-college-readers-need/

Waldron, Jeremy (1994). “Vagueness in Law and Language: Some Philosophical Issues.” California Law Review 83(2): 509-540.

Was, Chris (2014). “Mindfulness perspective on metacognition. ”Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/a-mindfulness-perspective-on-metacognition/

Thinking about How Faculty Learn about Learning

By Cynthia Desrochers, California State University Northridge

Lately, two contradictory adages have kept me up nights: “K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple, Stupid” (U.S. Navy) and “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong” (H.L. Mencken). Which is it? Experts have a wealth of well-organized, conditionalized, and easily retrievable knowledge in their fields (Bradford, et al., 2000). This may result in experts skipping over steps when they teach a skill that has become automatic to them. But where does this practice leave our novice learners who need to be taught each small step—almost in slow motion—to begin to grasp a new skill?

I have just completed co-facilitating five of ten scheduled faculty learning community (FLC) seminars in a yearlong Five GEARS for Activating Learning FLC. As a result of this experience, my takeaway note to self now reads in BOLD caps: (1) keep it simple in the early stages of learning and (2) model the entire process and share my thinking out loud—no secrets hidden behind the curtains!

The Backstory

The Five Gears for Activating Learning project at California State University, Northridge, began in fall 2012. It was my idea, and I asked seven university-wide faculty leaders to join me in a grassroots effort. Our goals were to improve student learning from inside the classroom (vs. policy modifications), promote faculty use of the current research on learning, provide a lens for judging the efficacy of various teaching strategies (e.g., the flipped classroom), and develop a common vocabulary for use campuswide (e.g., personnel communications). Support for this project came from the University Provost and the dean of the Michael D. Eisner College of Education in the form of reassigned time for me and 3-unit buyouts for each of the eight FLC members, spread over the entire academic year, 2014-15.

We read as a focus book How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (Ambrose, et al., 2010). We condensed Ambrose’s seven principles to five GEARS, one of which is Developing Mastery, which we defined as deep learning, reflection, and self-direction—critical elements of metacognition and the focus of this blog site.

On Keeping It Simple

I have been in education for forty-five years, yet I’m having many light-bulb moments with this FLC group – I’m learning something new, or reorganizing prior knowledge, or having increased clarity. Hence, I’ve given a lot of thought to the conflict between keeping it simple and omitting some important elements versus sharing more complex definitions and relationships and overwhelming our FLC members. My rationale for choosing simple: If I am still learning about how learning works, how can I expect new faculty—who teach Political Science, Business Law, Research Applications, and African Americans in Film, all without benefit of a teaching credential—to process some eighty years of research on learning in two semesters?

In opting for the K.I.S.S. approach, we have developed a number of activities and tools that scaffold learning to use the five GEARS in our teaching; moreover, each activity or tool models explicitly with faculty some practices we are encouraging them to use with their students. This includes (1) reflective writing in the form of learning logs and diaries, (2) an appraisal instrument to self-assess their revised (using the GEARS) spring 2015 course design, and (3) a class-session plan to scaffold their use of the GEARS. [See the detailed descriptions given in the handout resource posted on this site.] I hope to have some results data regarding their use in my spring blog.

Looking to next semester, our spring FLC projects will likely center around not only teaching the redesigned five GEARS course but also disseminating the five GEARS campuswide. As a direct result of the Daily Diary that FLC members kept for three weeks on others’ use and misuse of the five GEARS, they want to share our work. [See handout for further description of the Daily Diaries.] Dissemination possibilities include campus student tour guides, colleagues who teach a common course, Freshman Seminar instructors, librarians, and the Career Center personnel. If another adage is true, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn” (Benjamin Franklin), our FLC faculty will likely move of their own accord along the continuum from a simple to complex understanding of the five GEARS in their efforts to teach the five GEARS to others on campus.

A Word about GEARS

Why is this blog not focusing solely on the metacognition gear, which we call Developing Mastery? The simple answer is that learning is so intertwined that all the GEARS likely support metacognition in some way. However, any one of the activities or tools we have employed can be modified to limit the scope to your definition of metacognition. Our postcard below shows all five GEARS:

Faculty Metacognition of Verbal Questioning

by Charity Peak, U.S. Air Force Academy*

Few faculty would argue that teaching requires asking questions of students, but rarely do instructors consider the what, how, or why of their verbal questioning behavior. Without metacognition of questioning strategies, this foundational instructional technique can be wasted on habit rather than design.

Faculty question students for a variety of reasons. Surprisingly, most faculty use verbal questioning as a classroom management technique. This might look something like a machine gun approach, firing question after question in multiple directions in an effort to keep the class engaged. See a student dozing? Fire! Someone checking Facebook? Fire! Some researchers estimate that teachers ask as many as 120 questions per hour—a question every 30 seconds (Vogler, 2005)!While this strategy may keep students on their toes, it does not necessarily aid student learning. Often these questions are low level cognitive questions, requiring mainly recall of factual knowledge. If teachers wish to develop deeper levels of thinking, they must stimulate their students’ own evaluation of the content rather than merely requesting regurgitation of the basics.

At the other end of the spectrum is a master teacher’s approach to instruction that utilizes a specific questioning taxonomy proven to be effective for a variety of disciplines. Rather than using the run-and-gun approach, this faculty member masterfully leads students from one point to another through a series of thoughtfully derived questions. He or she might start with the big picture and lead to a specific point or, in contrast, begin with minutia but guide students to one main relevant theme by the end of class. Watching these instructors in action is often humbling. However, even these most masterful teachers are often not cognitively aware of the strategies they are using. They have figured out what works over time, but they likely can’t point to a specific methodology they were using to support their instruction. Rather than shooting in the dark over many years, faculty would be wise to understand the metacognition behind verbal questioning if they wish to be effective in creating higher order thinking in their students.

Moving beyond simple recall in questioning is certainly good advice for creating more opportunities in thinking, but it’s easier said than done. Faculty often report feeling uncomfortable trying new questioning strategies. Asking higher order thinking questions for application, analysis, and synthesis often creates extensive dead air time in the classroom. More difficult questions require more time to think, often in silence. Also, students are reluctant to change the very well-established classroom culture of “getting the answer right.” Based on years of classroom experience, students will often fire answers back, playing the game of “Guess what’s in the teacher’s head.”

Despite these cultural norms, it is possible through metacognition to improve verbal questioning. Some scholars argue that faculty should understand some of the basic questioning taxonomies that exist and how they influence learning. For example, asking open-ended versus closed-ended questions will alter the cognitive level of thinking and response (Rothstein & Santana, 2011). Open-ended questions tend to achieve thinking which is higher on Bloom’s Taxonomy. Students are required to generate thoughtful answers to questions as opposed to firing one to three word facts. For example, instead of asking, “What is an adverb?” faculty might ask students to apply their learning by identifying an adverb in a sentence or even creating their own sentences using adverbs. Better yet, The Right Question Institute (Rothstein & Santana, 2011) encourages faculty to get students to ask their own questions rather than teachers doing all the work. After all, the person generating the questions is arguably the person who is learning the most.

Other scholars suggest that faculty should consider the sequencing and patterns that are possible when asking questions (Vogler, 2005). For example, cognitive psychologists often suggest a funneling or convergent questioning technique, which leads students from big picture to details because it mirrors the cognitive functioning of the brain. However, depending on the subject area, faculty may find success in guiding students from narrow to broad thinking (divergent) by first asking low-level, general questions followed by higher-level, specific questions. Some disciplines lend themselves to using a circular path to force critical thinking in students. This pattern asks a series of questions which eventually lead back to the initial position or question (e.g., “What is justice?”). While students often find these patterns frustrating, it emphasizes to students the value of thinking rather than correctly identifying the right answer.

Ultimately, though, faculty would be wise to spend less energy on the exact strategy they plan to use and instead focus on the main goals of their questioning. In Making Thinking Visible (Ritchhart, Church, & Morrison, 2011), the authors propose that the purpose of questioning is really to make our students’ thinking visible by understanding our own expert-level thinking—aka metacognition. To do this, the authors suggest that instead of complex taxonomies and patterns, we should focus our efforts on three main purposes for questioning in our classes:

Modeling our interest in the ideas being explored
Helping students to construct understanding
Facilitating the illumination of students’ own thinking to themselves (i.e., metacognition)

By asking authentic questions – that is, questions to which the teacher does not already know the answer or to which there are not predetermined answers – instructors create a classroom culture that feels intellectually engaging, fosters a community of inquiry, and allows students to see teachers as learners (31). Faculty must frame learning as a complex communal activity rather than the process of merely accumulating information. Thoughtful questioning creates this classroom climate of inquiry, but only if faculty are metacognitive about their purpose and approach to using this critical pedagogical strategy. Without metacognition, faculty risk relying on the machine gun approach to questioning, wasting valuable class time on recall of factual information rather than elevating and revealing students’ thinking.

Ritchhart, R., Church, M., and Morrison, K. (2011). Making thinking visible: How to promote engagement, understanding, and independence for all learners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rothstein, D., and Santana, L. (2011). Make just one change: Teach students to ask their own questions. Boston: Harvard Education Press.

Vogler, K. E. (2005). Improve your verbal questioning. The Clearing House, 79(2): 98-103.

* 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.

Creating a Metacognitive Movement for Faculty

by Charity Peak, U.S. Air Force Academy*

Faculty often complain that students don’t complete reading assignments. When students do read, faculty yearn for deeper analysis but can’t seem to get it. With SAT reading scores reaching a four-decade low (Layton & Brown, 2012) and nearly forty percent of postsecondary learners taking remedial coursework (Bettinger & Long, 2009), it’s not surprising that college students are increasingly unable to meet the reading expectations of professors. Faculty sense the waning reading abilities of their students, but they struggle to identify how to address the problem. After all, they weren’t trained to be reading teachers.

In February 2012, a group of faculty gathered for a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Circle at the U.S. Air Force Academy to discuss how to get students to read more critically. The topic spurred such great interest that an interdisciplinary faculty learning community on Reading Critically was formed to investigate the issue and share strategies to use in the classroom. What evolved was a collective movement by faculty to become metacognitively aware of why and how they were assigning and apprenticing students to read more critically within their disciplines.

Our first meeting tackled the big question, “What do we want to know about college reading?” Despite our interdisciplinary nature, we easily identified several common areas of concern: Compliance (completing reading assignments), Comprehension (understanding what they read), and Critical Analysis. These Three C’s of College Reading guided our discussions over the next two academic years and eventually led to the creation of a website to assist other faculty members struggling with the same issues.

As academics, our first inclination was to dive into the literature to determine what other institutions had discovered about this issue. Surely we weren’t the only faculty grappling with these concerns. Not surprisingly, the research literature confirmed that the vast majority of college students do not read assignments ahead of time and do not consider the textbook to be a critical component of learning (Berry et al., 2010). In fact, a number of studies find that college students only read textbooks about six hours per week (Spinosa et al., 2008), with just 20-30% reading compliance for any given day and assignment (Hobson, 2004). Faculty hoping to set the stage prior to class and engage learners in meaningful discussions during class must first address reading compliance among students.

Unfortunately, reading is not indicative of comprehension. The combination of students’ weak reading abilities (particularly marginalized students) and difficult textbook structure produce unskilled learners, which faculty are unprepared to handle. Hobson (2004) explains that most college teachers – content specialists – do not realize their students are struggling to comprehend assigned texts. Furthermore, if faculty insist on emphasizing reading as part of their course structure, then “helping students improve their reading skills should be the responsibility of every college-level teacher” (p. 4). Without specific strategies to address the reading needs of students, typically far outside the spectrum of the usual subject area specialist, faculty are rendered helpless in creating deep thinking environments in the classroom.

Because low reading compliance predicts nonparticipation (Burchfield & Sappington, 2000), college faculty must address the issue in an effort to drive deeper learning. Over the course of two years, our Reading Critically faculty learning community identified and shared several research-based strategies to assist faculty in improving reading compliance, comprehension, and critical analysis. With no budget and nothing more than a dedication to the cause, we invited speakers to our meetings from our own institution to share how they were apprenticing readers within their courses. We discovered the value of pre-class reading guides, concept mapping, equation dictionaries, and even reading aloud in class. The interdisciplinary connectedness and learning through a common academic concern became a welcome respite from the typical silos that exist in higher education.

By the end of our first year together, our faculty learning community had gathered a wealth of research-based practices that could be implemented in courses across all disciplines. While each of the group’s participants had learned a great deal, we weren’t sure how to spread the word and continue the movement. Then, we discovered Carnegie Mellon’s Solve a Teaching Problem website. Alas, a model for us to follow! We set out to design a website for faculty to Solve a Reading Problem. Collaboratively, we created a step-by-step way for faculty to address reading issues they were encountering in their courses:

Step 1: Identify a reading problem

Step 2: Investigate a reason for the problem

Step 3: Initiate a strategy to address the problem

Our learning community pooled resources together by suggesting various problems and solutions along with research-based literature to support our ideas. Faculty then submitted lesson ideas and classroom strategies they found successful in their own courses to support better reading compliance, comprehension, and critical analysis. While the website is still very much a work in progress, it represents two years of metacognition around why faculty assign readings and how to maximize those opportunities in the classroom.

Ultimately, our faculty learned that we have a responsibility to be metacognitive about our own teaching practices in order to improve learning. This group’s commitment to the cause created an interdisciplinary metacognitive movement among our faculty that is still developing. What metacognitive movement can you lead at your institution?

References:

Berry, T., Cook, L., Hill, N,. & Stevens, K. (2010). An exploratory analysis of textbook usage and study habits: Misperceptions and barriers to success. College Teaching, 59(1), 31-39.

Bettinger, E., & Long, B. (2009). Addressing the needs of underprepared college students: Does college remediation work? Journal of Human Resources, 44(3), 736-771.

Burchfield, C. M., & Sappinton, J. (2000). Compliance with required reading assignments. Teaching of Psychology, 27(1), 58-60.

Hobson, E. H. (2004). Getting students to read: Fourteen tips. IDEA Paper No. 40. Manhattan, KS: The IDEA Center.

Layton, L., & Brown, E. (September 24, 2012). SAT reading scores hit a four-decade low. Washington Post. Washington, D.C.

Spinosa, H., Sharkness, J., Pryor, J. H., & Liu, A. (2008). Findings from the 2007 administration of the College Senior Survey (CSS): National aggregates. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA.

* 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.