Tag: Metacognitive Instruction

The Deliberate Educator and Metacognition: Is there a fit?

by Dr. Kim A. Hosler, Director of Instructional Design, United States Air Force Academy

What struck me…

A few days ago, a colleague and I were talking about what it means to be a deliberate educator. As I was thinking about what that meant, it struck me that to be a deliberate and purposeful educator, one must also be metacognitive about what they are doing and why. Can we say being a deliberate educator is also being a metacognitive educator? This notion gave me pause.Flow chart diagram listing 3 elements of the metacognitive instructor (reflective, deliberate, self-regulates)

At times we may have a tendency to teach the way we were taught, or in a way that feels right to us. It is possible that an approach that is comfortable for us could lead to effective instruction, but shouldn’t a deliberate educator’s approach to teaching be questioned and explored? Deliberate instructors take time to choose materials, plan course content and learning activities, to respond thoughtfully to learners, all done with intentionality.

Teaching deliberately means that as instructors we are thoughtful, purposeful, and studied about what we do in our classes. It means we put a sustained effort into improving our performance and enriching the learning experiences of our students. According to the McRel Organization (2017), “Being intentional means that teachers know and understand why they are doing what they are doing in the classroom to coach their students to deeper understanding and knowledge.”

Trede and McEwan (2016) talked about a pedagogy of deliberateness, stating that “beyond praxis, the pedagogy of deliberateness is also about knowing when to and when not to act and to challenge existing ways of doing, saying, relating and knowing” (p. 22). They further explained that a “deliberate professional has to be a thinker and a doer, where the thinking informs the doing and the doing informs the thinking. In that sense, the doing is as much a source for learning as the knowing and thinking” (p. 7). This claim speaks directly to critical elements of metacognition, such as awareness, reflection, cognitive monitoring and improvement. Metacognition is generally summarized as control of one’s cognitive skills, which involves planning, monitoring, and evaluating and then modifying one’s approach as needed to ensure student learning.

Where does metacognition fit in? Answer: Everywhere.

Being intentional and purposeful about my course design and teaching presents only part of the picture. Without thoughtful reflection, are we truly being deliberate and metacognitive? Schaefer (2019) reminded us that a metacognitive instructor “asks why they are proceeding in a particular manner” and then uses that reflective awareness to guide final decisions and actions. This supports the notion that being deliberate necessitates asking reflective, self-regulating questions regarding what we are being deliberate about. Specific questions might include:

  • Have I thought through the purpose of the learning activity(ies) I have students completing?
  • Can I explain the why of this activity to them?
  • Have I taken time to reflect on and note what went well with the learning activity and what I could have done better?
  • Have I considered why I am giving students a quiz over the material rather than a short essay? What are the consequences if I don’t give them a quiz or essay?
  • In my XYZ lesson, did I relate that content to previous lessons clearly?
  • What points of confusion did I observe during class? Why do I think some learners became confused?
  • What did I do to make this lesson engaging and interesting? Was it effective?

While I am deliberate and purposeful in my teaching and course design, I find I skimp on the reflection part and avoid asking myself the hard questions. Why, I wonder, am I not taking time to reflect? Do I think I intuitively “get it” and that “it” is correct or the best way? Do I think that being a deliberate educator is enough (no reflection necessary)? Additionally, when I more closely consider what metacognition means, I realize I am missing the self-regulation component, the intentional changes I may need to make after the lesson or course. Reflecting and noting my observations and ideas coupled with deliberate action to improve (self-regulating) will result in my becoming a more effective metacognitive instructor.

Meaningful reflection involves the conscious consideration of one’s beliefs and actions for the purposes of learning and improvement. To reflect, I need to slow down, tolerate the messiness and ambiguity reflection may bring, along with feelings of discomfort, vulnerability, and defensiveness. Without reflection, how do I know what to improve and what needs to be changed to better support student learning?

icon image of woman's head within a mirror frame, with a lightbulb at the top of her head, indicating thinking

To help me get started, Porter (2017) offered the following about reflecting.

  • Identify important questions and self a reflection process that works for you. Is that talking to others or writing in a journal?
  • Set aside time to reflect and stick to it. If you avoid that time, ask yourself why
  • Be still with your thoughts
  • Consider multiple perspectives
  • Start small, set aside 10-minute blocks of time to reflect, especially after an event or class while ideas and observations are fresh

A deliberate educator considers teaching as a purposeful act that can benefit from reflection, analysis, an intentional approach and action. When we are deliberate in our teaching, we know where we are going, how to get there, and the why behind what we are doing. This deliberate process involves taking time for reflection; reflection in planning, for asking the hard questions, and for monitoring our instructional practice. The monitoring of our instructional practice and resulting changes as realized through reflection, moves one from being a deliberate instructor to becoming a metacognitive instructor. Thus, being a deliberate educator is part of being a metacognitive instructor; however, as Scharff (2015) noted, metacognitive instructors also need to make intentional changes based on their reflections and situational awareness.

Please excuse me now, as I want to reflect on what I’ve just written and perhaps make intentional changes.

References

McRel Organization (2017). Intentional teaching inspires intentional learning. Retrieved from https://www.mcrel.org/intentional-teaching-inspires-intentional-learning.

Porter, J. (2017) Why you should make time for self-reflection (even if you hate doing it). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2017/03/why-you-should-make-time-for-self-reflection-even-if-you-hate-doing-it

Scharff, L. (2015). What Do We Mean by “Metacognitive Instruction”? Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/what-do-we-mean-by-metacognitive-instruction/

Schaffer, A. (2019) Metacognitive instruction: Suggestions for faculty. Improve with Metacognition. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/metacognitive-instruction-suggestions/

Trede, F., & McEwen, C. (2016). Educating the deliberate professional: Preparing for future practice (Vol. 17). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32958-1.


Learning. Design. Analytics. Post 2: Utilizing Instructional Design Methodologies and Learning Analytics to Encourage Metacognition

By Zhuqing Ding, MA

What’s the interaction like in higher education between faculty and instructional designers? While faculty often have full autonomy in their course design and teaching methodologies (Martin, 2009), instructional designers play the role of a change agent. When instructional designers propose improvements in instructional strategies and recommend significant changes to existing courses, faculty may resist adopting their recommendations. With this in mind, the online course design team at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), Georgetown University, had implemented an adaptive approach to the course design process since 2018. During the pandemic, we were able to pivot and expand this approach to offer support to faculty across the university and not only to the ones who had been part of online programs.

So, what makes our process adaptive? The traditional ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate) instructional design model, focuses on linear processes in content development. Compared to the traditional instructional design approach, an adaptive approach has distinct iterative phases where we use learning analytics as evidence to initiate faculty members’ metacognition, thereby inspiring changes to future iterations of the course.

Here is how our course design team implemented the adaptive approach for transforming an existing classroom-based law course to fully online. Before moving online, this tax law course was offered once a week through one 2.5-hour lecture, accompanied by reading assignments and graded only by one final exam. During the first phase of our adaptive process our team tackled the following questions:

  • How can we transform the passive learning experiences in the classroom (receiving information) into active learning (interacting with the course materials)?
  • How can we strike a balance between good practices for online course design and the traditional methods familiar to/preferred by law school professors?
  • What are some of the strategies we will use to encourage the faculty members to evaluate their own teaching strategies to become more mindful and intentional about their own teaching?

While lecturing has been proven to be the most used instructional method, especially in higher education, it is more suitable for a face-to-face traditional classroom than an online environment (McKeachie, 1990). In an online course, passively receiving a large amount of information by watching a series of 2.5-hour lectures can be challenging for students. Following an adaptive process allowed us to guide faculty toward an awareness that designing an online course is more than recording lectures and that students need to interact with the lectures in order to be able to recall and retrieve what they are learning. The following image shows the metacognitive activities that we incorporated in the adaptive design approach. During the first phase of the course, our course design team introduced activities that support reflective practice to enable faculty members to become more self-aware about their own teaching and learning. Then, in the second phase we introduce activities that encourage a deepening of the reflective practice to spark creativity.

Flow diagram showing Phase 1: Course Translation and Phase 2: Course Adaptation

 

Interactive and short lectures

In order to collect data that can help us understand the students’ learning experience, we proposed to the faculty to create interactive and short lectures to replace the 2.5-hour long lectures in each module. To demonstrate to faculty the types of interactive elements that can be inserted into lectures, we introduced a storyboarding method. In the script, the faculty broke their long lectures into subtopics. Our instructional designers highlighted the keywords and areas that could be illustrated by graphics or animations. Then, the faculty confirmed the highlights and the graphics, and added/deleted as needed.

The resultant, short, subtopic videos were presented as playlists in the course. Within each video, the professor is shown lecturing on the right side of the screen, and on the left, relevant animated keywords, charts, and graphics appear. Certain parts of the charts were highlighted as the professor talked through certain elements within the charts. Such interactive elements within the lectures are designed to help students make a connection to the professor while also focusing on important keywords and short summaries of the lecture topics.

The analytics report provided by the video hosting platform that became available after the course launched helped with the faculty’s meta-thinking. Based on the total views, total minutes of content delivered, unique viewers, and the percentage of completion data for each video, the course team was able to understand important aspects of the students’ learning experience: the videos that had the highest views, the videos that students were not able to finish watching, and the videos that students watched again and again. Such evidence helped the faculty identify knowledge areas that students were not able to understand right away and recognize times when students’ participation dropped.

In the second iteration/phase of this course, the faculty took several actions to not only improve the course design, but also improved his teaching presence in this online course. First, during the low-participation time observed from the analytics report of the first iteration, reminders were sent to students to encourage them to keep up the pace. Additionally, more office hours including one-on-one and group office hours were scheduled, allowing students to clear up questions with the professor if they got stuck. The faculty was able to address common questions during the recorded office hour sessions, and made these sessions available to students. Overall, the student-faculty interaction was improved since, due to metacognition, the faculty became more aware of the importance of building interactive touch points to keep online students on track. The metacognition has initiated his awareness of the importance of the teaching presence in the online courses.

Weekly Activities

The law school has a long-standing tradition of using final exams as the only assessment in a given course. In face-to-face classes, interactions such as small talk among peers before and after the class and question-and-answer sessions after each lecture help students confirm whether they are on track. For online students, such checkpoints are missing and, therefore, it is necessary to periodically build them in so students can make sure they are following along.

In the first iteration of the course, we introduced weekly, ungraded quizzes, allowing students to practice, experiment, and reflect on their learning. Since this particular course is related to tax law, the quiz questions — most requiring calculation in Excel — were extracted from previous exams. Correct answers and short explanations were provided for each question at the end of the quiz. Students were allowed to take the quizzes multiple times. Such low-stakes activities provided the space for students to explore and discover the answers during their learning.

After the first iteration of the course, the professor was able to review the quiz analytics report provided by the quiz tool in Canvas, which allowed for metacognition on the activity design. There was a correlation between students’ performance on the weekly quizzes and the final exam. Students who didn’t participate in the practice quizzes at all achieved lower scores than students who did. Students who completed practice quizzes were also more active in the online office hours and found more opportunities to engage with the professor throughout the semester. Based on this finding, the professor realized the importance of motivating students to practice on a weekly basis in order to assess their understanding and ask questions before they fall too far behind.

By the second iteration of the course, a few actions were taken to improve students’ engagement in weekly quizzes. The professor improved the design of the quiz questions by adding downloadable Excel spreadsheets with formulas to the provided explanations of the quiz answers, allowing students to tinker with formulas and reflect on their own calculations. He also offered additional office hours following the quizzes in each module to make sure students had the opportunity to ask questions.

The professor moved from reluctance to including weekly quizzes at all, since they didn’t exist in the face-to-face class, to encouraging active learning processes by improving the quiz question design and proactively providing space for students to reach out to him with questions. Quiz analytics served as evidence that drove the faculty member to metacognition and improved the way he teaches online.

Summary

Metacognition is implicitly part of faculty development programs across disciplines. However, while working with law faculty, the adaptive approaches our course design team followed led to new reflections about their teaching practice. It was challenging to find the balance between traditional ways of teaching in the law school and an interactive online course that would allow students to succeed in a virtual environment. The adaptive approach allows the instructional designers and faculty to reach more agreements with iterative efforts. We used the analytics provided by the media-hosting tool and the quiz tools as evidence to encourage meta-thinking about the faculty’s teaching practice. This led to minor changes to the course with significant impacts. With such evidence, faculty are more open to adapting their long-standing teaching practices and embracing new ways of designing online courses. Sometimes these metacognitive approaches to teaching online also inspire faculty to rethink their teaching practices in traditional classrooms, such as providing more measurable learning goals or diversifying assessment methods.

References

McKeachie, W. J. (1990) Research on College Teaching: The Historical Background, Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 2, 189-200.

Martin, R. E. (2009). The revenue-to-cost spiral in higher education. Raleigh, NC: John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED535460.pdf


Learning. Design. Analytics. Post 1: A Faculty Development Approach To Support Metacognitive Awareness During Course Adaptation

By Yianna Vovides, PhD (Series Editor), Georgetown University

I once worked with a faculty member who was skeptical about teaching an online course, let alone spending time working with a designer on it. So, after my first meeting with him, realizing his hesitations, I created a prototype based on his course syllabus to show him what was possible. I remember him saying, I couldn’t see how to teach my course online, I am not a techie, but maybe I can if you help me.

He now saw me as his coach and partner, helping him plan how to engage students, helping him put in place assignments that he could manage within the course management system, helping him during his teaching. All along, during the four months we spent on his course, I would ask him about his teaching philosophy and his approach to teaching in his discipline. About a month before the course was ready to launch, I asked him if he could write a few paragraphs to explain to his students what he was sharing with me about his choices in the readings, his expectations in relation to how students approached a text and what he looked for in their assignments. He did.

We ended up recording these (only audio) and adding them to his week-by-week course structure. I then asked him if he was up for doing some more recording that focused on the selection of texts in his courses. I asked him to share his study of the authors themselves. He did. I then created an e-book that students would use to explore a bit more about the authors from their instructor’s perspective.

When the course opened, I spent an hour on the phone walking him through how to respond to student posts in the discussion board. He said, Thank you, I think I can do this! And he did. During the first run of his course, I sent him weekly emails to check in and point out the student monitoring/analytic features for making sure his students were keeping up.

What does metacognition have to do with it?

Because the process of online course development takes time, the relationship between the designer and the faculty tends to result in one that lasts past that one course experience. It is usually after the first course design and the first time faculty teach their course when they realize how much they learned about teaching and learning. They then go on to adapt their other courses. They are more metacognitively aware. They are aware of their own approaches to teaching and learning, aware of what it takes to design and teach a course in another mode, and are aware that good design and teaching involves planning, monitoring, reflecting, evaluating, and adapting existing practices. This is how I define the process of course adaptation that we will explore further in this post.

Let us dig a bit deeper into course adaptation.

In this post, I describe the adaptive approach we have implemented as part of our online programs efforts at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), Georgetown University. The approach connects instructional design practices with a faculty development focus that encourages metacognition (planning, monitoring, evaluating). I started with the following overarching question: How should instructional designers guide faculty to rethink their approach to course design to follow an adaptive faculty development process? I then identified the following sub-questions that formed the basis of the approach and operationalizing the process: 

  • What techniques can instructional designers follow to engage faculty in design thinking? 
  • What techniques can instructional designers follow to engage faculty in meta reflections about their teaching methods? 
  • How can instructional designers use learning analytics to help faculty continue engaging in meta reflections during their online teaching? 

The questions I listed above offered the CNDLS online programs team a way to problematize our approach to design. I realized that we needed to make visible the levels (macro, meso, micro) that we address during the design process and enable faculty to navigate these successfully. We implemented a model that enables conversations about design and development at all levels by following a before, during, after approach (see Figure 1).

circle schematic with three equal components: before, during, after
Figure 1. Macro – Before, during, after model

The guiding questions start at the course level and move to sessions and sequence of engagement exploring the teaching and learning experience across time. These questions include but are not limited to the following:

  • Tell us about your course. What do you love about this course? What do you think the students love about this course?
  • What are the things that you think about when you prepare to teach this course?
  • How do you engage your students before the semester starts?
  • What do you do during that first class session?
  • What do you expect students to do during the first class session?
  • What do you do after the class session?
  • What do you want students to do after the class session?

These questions help faculty reflect about their approach to teaching and learning. By asking these questions up front and throughout the course adaptation process we are embedding metacognitive instruction within the course design model itself. In addition, throughout the design process we include check-in sessions that allow both the designer and faculty to pause and ask:

  • Is our design plan still valid?
  • Is our choice of technology going to support students in their learning process?
  • Do we need to do anything differently?

What these check-in questions do over the span of four to six months of engaging with an individual faculty on the course design and development process is that the conversations become connected across time and merge into a spiral design model. Figure 2 visualizes the spiral model that supports the faculty development approach that instructional designers take. Once faculty members experience this model, they continue to follow this design approach as they envision their other courses. In addition, they tend to re-visit their approach to their teaching shifting from an instructor-centered to a student-centered approach.

Schematic of a spiral illustrating loops of before, during, after
Figure 2. Spiral – Before, during, after Model

Because the model is based on time, it easily communicates across the various disciplines. What do I mean by that? Because the conversations that surround this model are related to teaching practices, it is also a way to account for contact time (faculty-student interaction) and learning time (student effort). We refer to the combination of contact time and learning time as instructional time in conversations with faculty. In remote teaching and learning, instructional time is an entry point to envisioning how learning can happen in different ways.

The rest of the mini-series on Learning. Design. Analytics. includes examples using this approach that highlight strategies used to activate metacognitive awareness during the course design and re-design process through the designer-faculty interaction. In addition, the series highlights how technology interventions and learning analytics are integrated as part of the process.

Some background about instructional design and online education to frame the approach

Adapting traditional classroom-based courses to online may sound simple given that online education has been around for more than two decades. In fact, instructional design, a field of study that is over 80 years old, offers theories, models, and processes that guide designers to make this adaptation from traditional classroom-based teaching to online. This is a technical challenge – solutions are available and are knowable. However, in higher education, the instructional design process, when framed to support faculty development, introduces complexity. The challenge is no longer technical because the focus of the challenge is no longer about the course adaptation from traditional to online but the people involved in making the adaptation happen (faculty, designers, media specialists, students, and other members of the team that supports this process). It is a process of transformation.

Let us pull this apart a bit more. Higher education as an institution has been described as lacking innovation and flexibility for promoting impactful teaching and learning (Rooney et al., 2006). That was in 2006. Between 2006 and 2016,  we have seen online education grow and thrive with over 6 million students (approximately 30% of all higher education students) enrolled in at least one distance education course in the United States (Allen & Seaman, 2017). Then COVID-19 happened. Remote teaching and learning is happening across the globe and is now the new normal. Given the speed of the changes, some schools have been able to pivot and put in place the needed support for their instructors while others are struggling to determine what that support needs to be and how to operationalize it. 

There are many factors that contribute to these decisions besides resources such as institutional, departmental, and individual cultural norms. For example, the institutional culture may be known by those who are in it but much of it is hidden from those new to it which may lead to actions that are oftentimes driven by assumptions rather than visible evidence (Halupa, 2019). Many academic departments tend to value individual contributions and can propagate a competitive rather than a collaborative environment. This may then lead to a less cohesive curriculum online. Individual faculty members are experts in their discipline but not necessarily in the discipline of teaching and learning. Therefore, within this complex network of needs, faculty development efforts in higher education try to balance group and individual engagements to provide opportunities for faculty to get the support they need in their teaching.

Recognizing that there are different instructional development needs necessitates that we offer different entry points and pathways in our faculty development programming. Within the online course design efforts, we work with faculty to help them see their teaching challenge from a design thinking perspective that begins with an exploration of what individual learners will experience. By doing so, we are no longer facing a technical challenge but rather an adaptive one because we are now focusing on individual learner needs. To tackle this adaptive challenge that is implicitly dynamic because of the focus on humans, we argue that the approach requires that planning, monitoring, and evaluation become an integral part of the process at both the cognitive and metacognitive levels. 

References

Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2017). Digital Compass Learning: Distance Education Enrollment Report 2017. Babson survey research group.

Halupa, C. (2019). Differentiation of Roles: Instructional Designers and Faculty in the Creation of Online Courses. International Journal of Higher Education, 8(1), 55-68.

Rooney, P., Hussar, W., Planty, M., Choy, S., Hampden-Thompson, G., Provasnik, S., & Fox, M. A. (2006). The Condition of Education, 2006. NCES 2006-071. National Center for Education Statistics.


Reflection Matters: Using Metacognition to Track a Moving Target

INTRODUCTION: A CALL FOR CONTEMPLATIVE PEDAGOGY

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

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

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

The word Teach with it's reflection made to look like the word Learn

AN ANALOGY: TARGET PRACTICE

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

Teaching & Learning Goals: See the target.

Teaching & Learning Objectives: Aim for the target.

Teaching & Learning Outcomes: Hit the target.

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

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

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

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

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

A TIME FOR CONTEMPLATION: PANDEMIC PEDAGOGY DURING COVID-19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONCLUSION: THE GREAT PAUSE

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

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.—Albert Einstein

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

WORKS CITED

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

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


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

The word "preface" with a scrolled "p"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Fractals and Teaching Philosophies (Part 2): Some Reflection on the Value of Metacognition

by Dr. Ed Nuhfer, California State Universities (retired)

Our previous blog contribution introduced the nature of fractals and explained why the products of intellectual development have fractal qualities. Our brain neurology is fractal, so fractal qualities saturate the entire process of intellectual development. Read the previous blog now, to refresh any needed awareness.

The acts of drafting and using a written philosophy are metacognitive by design. Rare use of philosophies seems symptomatic of undervaluing metacognition. When we operate from a written philosophy, each day offers a practice of metacognition through asking: “Did I practice my philosophy?” That involves considering where we might not have exercised one of the fractal generator’s six components (Figure 1) and then resolve to do so at the next opportunity. Doing so instills the habits of mind needed to do what we intended. Such metacognitive practice is very different from engaging challenges as separately packaged events, without using the “thinking about thinking” needed to understand how our practice was consistent with what we wanted to do. In teaching, we find some of our most significant difficulties appear when we find ourselves doing the opposite of what we most wanted to do. We get into those difficulties by not being aware of the decisions that brought us there.

One possible application of metacognition lies in a large-scale challenge that affects all schools – the annual evaluation of faculty for retention and promotion often reveals chronic problems. How might the standard practices faculty typically experience differ from a practice in which faculty employed written teaching philosophies as a way to address this annual challenge?

WHY Do We Do Annual Review of Faculty?

A metacognitive approach would start with a reflection of the reasons WHY schools go through the prickly annual ritual of evaluating faculty and the outcomes that they hope to attain from doing it. A recent discussion on a faculty development listserv showed that almost no institutions have satisfying answers to “WHY?” For many, an unreflective approach to annual review commonly defaulted to ranking the faculty according to their scores from student ratings forms, sometimes from just one global item on the forms. Asking “WHY?” resulted in the following personal email from an accomplished faculty member: “The main rationale seems in practice often to be simply ‘We have to determine annual merit scores to determine salary increases, and so we have to generate a merit score for teaching (and for research and for service).’”

Given such an annual review process, the faculty will focus on becoming “better teachers” by focusing on raising their student ratings scores, but is that the primary outcome that institutions want? Would we write that “to obtain high student ratings” as a reason that we teach in our teaching philosophies? If we sincerely want effective teaching and student learning, is there a better answer to “WHY?”

Employing Written Philosophies – An Alternate Approach

More specifically, consider which outcome of the following you would choose to expend efforts for yourself or your colleagues: 1) to try to achieve higher student ratings or 2) to improve their mastery of some things labeled in Figure 1 that are known to increase student learning? For example, if a faculty member chose for one year to produce better learning by expanding his knowledge of pedagogy to permit the matching of different kinds of instruction to specific types of content, could that be preferable? Suppose another faculty member discovered that particular stages of adult thinking existed. What if she aspired in the coming year to gain an understanding of this literature, and she focused in the coming year on designing some lessons that helped students to discover the level of thinking they had reached and what their next higher stage might be? Might that be preferable to trying to achieve higher ratings?

Illustration of components (thinking, teaching, learning) in the fractal generator for faculty and students (by Ed Nuhfer)

Figure 1. We repeat the graphic from Part 1, Figure 2 here. This representation of a philosophy as a fractal generator is somewhat analogous to a stem cell in that it contains all the essential components to produce whatever we need. Metacognition allows us to identify something of value to our current practice. Then for a year, we articulate a philosophy that includes a focus to develop that area.

When we begin to be metacognitive concerning WHY we should want to do annual evaluations and how we should use student input, things should emerge that differ from merely sorting faculty into categories in order to dispense rewards and penalties. Some positive outcomes might be enhancing awareness of how we could design our annual evaluations to help make our institutions more fit places in which to teach and learn, or to provide our graduates with better capacity for life-long learning. In such cases, the nature of annual review changes from an inspection of each faculty member’s popularity with her or his students at the end of their courses into a metacognitive process designed to produce valued outcomes. Management expert Edwards Deming warned particularly about trying to “inspect in” quality at the end of an event or process. Deming’s 14 principles can be condensed into just one concept: “Be metacognitive.” Remain aware of what you most wanted to do when you take any actions to do it.

Changing the Annual Review Format: Embed Metacognition

“Be metacognitive” represents a significant change in most institutional thinking. So, how might we enact this change? One approach would be to design the annual review more like a self-directed contract for practice. Faculty write the philosophies that they intend to practice. A graphic generator like Figure 1 can assist understanding what one now does lots of and too little of. They pick a specific area that they want to do more of and articulate their intent to develop some additional strength in that area. They also articulate WHY they chose this emphasis and what outcome they seek to achieve.

When faculty start their term, they share with their students the emphasis and the outcome through the written syllabus of each class. During the semester, their practice now achieves a metacognitive quality. They regularly reflect on their practice and monitor themselves on whether they are practicing as intended. Their annual review of teaching then becomes a report with parts somewhat like the following. 

  • Did they practice their stated philosophy? 
  • How did their students respond?
  • How did their practice change, and did that contribute to revisions in their philosophy?
  • What is their written contractual plan and philosophy for the coming year?

Weighing the Alternatives

Of the two models of annual evaluations shared above, over-reliance on student ratings for faculty evaluation answers the WHY question with: “We maintain universities so that students can rate the faculty and so that faculty will strive to be rewarded for higher ratings.” Such absurdities arise whenever we practice with no better answers to “WHY?”

As a final thought, consider how an end-of-the-course grade for a student is analogous to annual evaluation for a faculty member. How might teaching students to write their learning philosophies improve their design for learning?


Facilitating Metacognition in the Classroom: Teaching to the Needs of Your Students

by Gina Burkart, EdD, Learning Specialist, Clarke University 

Once instructors understand the strengths and weaknesses of students, they can begin to adapt how they deliver the content of their course in ways that their students will be able to connect with it. This makes self-assessments valuable tools for learning and teaching (Burkart, 2020). Self-Assessments help professors note students’ strengths, weaknesses, and perceptions of self so that they can teach curriculum to the needs of the students. This allows professors to use metacognition in their own teaching, i.e. metacognitive instruction.

Mapping Out a Plan for Teaching and Learning

In my own courses, student assessments guide me in using a chart to map out a plan of how to address students’ needs while teaching the planned curriculum on the syllabus. This allows me to be mindful of my teaching and how it is connecting with students as the semester unfolds. The chart helps me note and monitor my students’ strengths and weaknesses, how these may impact course goals/outcomes and strategies that I will use to help my students adapt to the content demands of the course. See Figure 1 for an example chart.

Likewise, it is also helpful to guide students in using metacognition to create their own learning plans for the semester. Creating learning plans can be an effective activity for the first meeting of the class, while going through the course syllabus.

To facilitate this activity, a professor might hand out the syllabus, give students 5-10 minutes to read through the syllabus, and then have them share responses to the following questions in small groups to more strategically and critically read the syllabus and discuss it with classmates:

  • What prior reading and writing experiences have shaped you as a learner?
  • Based on this course syllabus, what challenges do you anticipate?
  • What strategies and resources will you use to meet these challenges?
  • What are your goals for this course?
  • How can you connect the material of this course with your major?
  • How can we as your learning community support you with your learning and goals? What do you need from us?

The small groups can then be invited to share their responses with the large group and write them on the board. Professors might then take a picture of the board and refer back to it later to use as an informal student assessment to inform teaching.

Finally, students return to small groups to create a more detailed and personalized plan of what they might do in order to find success and meet the outcomes of class. Professors might provide a template of a learning plan that would guide students in going through the syllabus and pulling out key information to create the plan. See Figure 2 for an example student learning plan.

Having these types of activities and discussions at the beginning of a course empowers students, as they realize that they are in charge of their learning. As Biggs and Tang (2011) have recognized, student engagement increases when students feel co-ownership and empowerment in the classroom.

Adaptation for Online Courses

This metacognitive activity can also be adapted in an online course through Voice Thread. Voice Thread allows students to create and upload an interactive, video recording of themselves. I have asked students to respond to the same questions in a 3-5-minute Voice Thread video and to also respond to a classmate’s Voice Thread. Additionally, after completing the Voice Threads, students were required to electronically submit a learning plan based on the syllabus for course credit. Similar to the in-class discussions in the face-to-face class, this activity fosters the metacognitive monitoring process that Flavell (1979) described. As students reflect on the skills necessary for the course outcomes, prior metacognitive knowledge and experiences resurface as goals are set and strategies for achieving the goals are identified and shared. Professors are then also able to monitor the needs of the students and provide feedback related to goals and strategies.

In both instances, students are able to share about their learning in a social setting, which reminds students they are not alone in their learning. This is important because students learn about their own learning and self by reflecting on the learning of others (Mead, 1962/1934; Burkart, 2010).

Assignments and Activities that Continue to Foster Metacognitive Growth throughout the Semester

Professors can continue to foster metacognition throughout the semester by integrating assignments and activities that reinforce reflection on learning, strategies, and goal setting. For example, professors might begin each class period with a 1-minute pre-write where students list main points from the assigned readings, questions they want to discuss in class, and why the material is relevant and important. I often have students do this on an index card, and I collect them and use the cards to guide my teaching during the class. While students are engaged in group work, I quickly go through the cards, award a check, plus, or minus with brief comments (to show I value metacognitive work) and incorporate these into class participation points. Questions that students wanted to discuss in class are then discussed. Sometimes, I pose the questions to the large group for discussion. Other times, I distribute the questions to small groups and assign them to formulate a response for the rest of the class.

Not only does using students’ questions in class show students that they are being listened to, it acknowledges that their questions are valued and their preparatory work outside of class is connected to learning inside the classroom. And, based on their questions and class discussion, I rethink strategies and interventions to help students better access the course materials. As Simmons (2017) noted, this type of participatory pedagogy makes students more aware of their own cognitive processes.

The following is a list of activities that I have used or recommended to faculty to foster student metacognition in the classroom (Burkart, 2019):

  • 1-minute prewrite at the beginning of class
  • Create or model note-taking and reading that facilitates learning
  • Model thinking aloud with problem solving, reading, interpreting
  • Incorporate learning checks
  • Assign post-test or assignment analysis
  • Encourage learning material on all levels of learning by assessing and modeling strategies scholars use: concept mapping, reading journals, study/note journals, portfolios
  • Reward revision, rethinking, growth by awarding points to final products
  • Use wrappers while teaching
  • Encourage or arrange study groups
  • Relate the material to students’ lives and experiences
  • Create and assign course blogs with prompts that encourage reflection and discussion on goals, use of strategies, and challenges and growth with learning course material
  • Create group tests/assessments

While monitoring students’ needs and growth throughout the semester, professors can use this list to use metacognition in their own teaching—establish goals and integrate strategies to impact student learning. In turn, this will guide students in reflecting on their learning and increase engagement. Most importantly it provides practice in metacognition that empowers students to take control of their own learning that will carry over into other classes and their personal lives outside of the classroom.

References

Biggs, J. B., & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for quality learning at the university: What the student does. Maidenhead, UK: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press.

Burkart, G. (2019). Engaging the unengaged in the college classroom. Faculty workshop—by request, Clarke University, Dubuque, IA.

Burkart, G. (2010, Dec). First-Year College Student Beliefs about Writing Embedded in Online Discourse: An Analysis and Its Implications to Literacy Learning. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA.

Burkart, G. (2010, May). An analysis of online discourse and its application to literacy learning, The Journal of Literacy and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.literacyandtechnology.org/uploads/1/3/6/8/136889/jlt_v11_1.pdf#page=64

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Simmons, N. (2017). Participatory Pedagogy: Inviting Student Metacognition. Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/developing_student_metacognition_simmons/


Metacognitively meeting students where they are

John Draeger, SUNY Buffalo State

The Teaching and Learning Center at SUNY Buffalo State hosts a regular breakfast conversation on Friday mornings. Faculty and staff gather around coffee, bagels, and a common reading. This fall we read Becoming a Student-Ready College: A new culture of leadership for success (McNair et al., 2016). The book chronicles recent changes in higher-education. More and more students are the first in their families to go to college. More come from communities of color. More work full-time and find it necessary to take care of family members while attending school. I love the underlying premise of the book. The question is NOT what students are doing to ready for us. Rather, the question is what WE are doing to get ready for THEM.

This post argues that promoting metacognition is necessary if we are going to meet the needs of our current students. Metacognition prompts us to be aware of what students need and points the way towards the necessary adjustments.

We can do better and we must do better. Students are stopping out at alarming rates. In some cases, this is simply because they didn’t successfully navigate obtuse institutional expectations. For example, how many times do we ask students to crisscross campus for this signature on that form only to be told they need to come back later? Come to think of it, how many institutional procedures actually make sense? Many policies kept alive by sheer institutional inertia. Those of us who have been around long enough may know how to navigate them, but this is profoundly unfair to students.

McNair et al. encourage each of us to ask the questions that pave the way for student success, even when (perhaps especially when) it is uncomfortable. They call on campuses to embrace a leadership model that is simultaneously bottom-up, top-down, and inside-out. Everyone must take it upon themselves to live into their role in creating a study-ready campus.

Senior leadership needs to articulate a vision of the campus needs to do to be ready for students.  Shared governance bodies need to hold the campus accountable. Offices across campus can, and should, reflect on the policies, procedures, attitudes, and behaviors that might inadvertently impede student success. While no one person can transform the campus, each person can clean up their own corner of it. How can departments align learning outcomes with the needs of current students? How can faculty explore whether and how their classroom methods facilitate student learning of all students? And how can everyone on campus be mindful of the many points of view represented by our diverse student bodies, and strive to overcome stereotypes and implicit bias to demonstrate a steadfast belief in students?

Each chapter of the book offers a series of guiding questions to frame campus discussions. They are, in essence, offering a metacognitive approach to culture change. It can happen. Jen McCabe and Justine Chasmar outline how Goucher College has been transformed through metacognition (McCabe & Chasmar, 2018). Of note, the Goucher initiative was kicked off by their president, Jose Antonio Bowen. While it takes a campus become student-ready, senior leadership can play an important role in framing the conversation. Regardless, the conversation needs to happen if campuses are to meet students where they are.

This site defines ‘metacognition” as “an intentional focusing of attention on a process in which one is personally engaged. It encourages awareness of one’s current state of accomplishment, along with the situational influences and strategy choices that are currently, or have previously, influence accomplishment of that process.” Becoming student ready requires that each and every person be personally engaged with student success. Individuals and offices across campus need to critically assess the current state of affairs. Is this a student ready campus? If not, then what are the situational influences keeping that from happening?

If change is necessary, then what strategy choices are mostly likely to influence that process? Progress should be monitored so that all involved are aware of the current state of accomplishment. If the current strategies are not resulting in a student-ready campus, then further thought should be put to how campuses will make the necessary adjustments. In short, metacognition is necessary if colleges and universities are to become student-ready.

References

McCabe, J. & Chasmar, J. (posted December 10, 2018). “Metacognition at Goucher I: Framework and Implementation.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/metacognition-at-goucher-i-framework-and-implementation/.

McNair, T. B., Bensimon, E., Cooper, M. A., McDonald, N., & Major Jr, T. (2016). Becoming a student-ready college: A new culture of leadership for student success. John Wiley & Sons.

 

 


Micro-Metacognition Makes It Manageable

By Dr. Lauren Scharff, U. S. Air Force Academy *

For many of us, this time of year marks an academic semester’s end. It’s also intertwined with a major holiday season. There is so much going on – pulling our thoughts and actions in a dozen different directions. It almost seems impossible to be metacognitive about what we’re doing while we’re doing it: grading that last stack of exams or papers, finalizing grades, catching up on all those work items that have been on the back burner but need to get done before the semester ends. And that’s just a slice of our professional lives. Add in all the personal tasks and aspirations for these final few weeks of the year, and it’s Go, Go, Go until the day is over.

Well, that was a bit cathartic to get out, but also a bit depressing. Logically I know that by taking the time to reflect and use that awareness to help guide my behaviors (i.e. engage in metacognition), I will feel energized and revitalized because I’ll have a plan with a good foundation. I will more likely be successful in whatever it is I’m hoping to accomplish, especially if I regularly take the time to reflect and fine tune my efforts. But the challenge is, how do I fit it all in?

My proposed solution is micro-metacognition!

So, what do I mean by that? I think micro-metacognition is analogous to taking the stairs whenever you can rather than signing up for a new gym membership. Stairs are readily available at no cost and can be used spur-of-the-moment. In comparison, the gym membership requires a more concerted effort and larger chunks of time to get to the facility, work out, clean up and head home. In the more academic realm, micro metacognition falls in line with the spirit of James Lang’s (2016) Small Teaching recommendations. He advocates for the powerful impact of even small changes in our teaching (e.g. how we use the first 5 minutes of class). In other words, we don’t have to completely redesign a course or our way of teaching to see large benefits.

To help place micro-metacognition into context, I will borrow a framework from Poole and Simmons (2013), who suggested a “4M” model for conceptualizing the level of impact of SoTL work: micro (individual/classroom), meso (department/ program), macro (institutional), and mega (beyond a single institution). In this case though, we’re looking at engagement in metacognitive practices, so the entity or level of focus will always be the individual, and the scale will refer to the amount of planning, effort, and time needed for the metacognitive practice. This post focuses on instructors being metacognitive about their practice of teaching, but I believe that parallels can easily be made for students’ engagement in metacognition as they are learning.  

The 4M Metacognition Framework

Micro-metacognition – Use of isolated, low-cost tactics to promote metacognitive instruction when engaged in single tasks (e.g. grading a specific assignment – see below for fleshed out example). These can be used without investments in advance planning.

Meso-metacognition – Use of tactics to promote metacognitive instruction throughout an individual lesson or when incorporating a specific type of activity (e.g. discussion or small group work) across multiple lessons. These tactics have been given more forethought with respect to integration with lesson / activity objectives.  

Macro-metacognition – Use of more regular tactics to promote metacognitive instruction across an entire course / semester. Planning for these would be more long-term and closely integrated with learning objectives for the course or with professional development goals of the instructor.  (For an example of this level of effort, see Use of a Guided Journal to Support Development of Metacognitive Instructors.)

Mega-metacognition – Use of tactics to promote metacognitive instruction across an instructor’s entire set of courses and professional activities (and beyond). At this level of engagement, metacognition will likely be a “way of doing things” for the instructor, but each new engagement will still require conscious effort and planning to support goals and objectives.

An Example of Micro Metacognition

Micro-metacognition  efforts are not pre-planned when the instructional task is planned; they are added later as the idea crosses the instructor’s mind and opportunity arises.

For example, when I am about to start grading a specific group of papers, I might reflect that in addition to the formally-stated learning objectives that will be assessed on the rubric, I want to support growth mindset in my students for their future writing efforts. This additional goal could come about from a recent reading on mindset or discussion with my colleagues. I know that I would be likely to forget this goal when I’m focused on the other rubric aspects of the grading. So, I write that goal on a stickie note and put it where I am likely to see it when grading. Then, when I am grading, I have an easy-to-implement awareness aide to add comments in the papers that might specifically support my students’ growth mindset.

Image showing an office with a sticky note stuck to the corner of a computer screen. The note says "Promote Growth Mindset -- encourage exploration of new ideas & connections"

In sum:  easily implemented stickie note –> promotes awareness of goal –> self-regulation of desired grading behavior on that specific instructional task == Micro-metacognitive Instruction!

I can think of lots of other ways instructors might incorporate micro-metacognition in their instructional endeavors, from the proverbial string tied to one’s finger, to pop-up calendar prompts, to asking a student for a reminder to attend to questions when we get to a particular topic.  Or, awareness might come without an intentional prompt. The key is to then use that awareness to self-regulate some aspect of our instructional behavior in support of student learning and development. The opportunities are endless!

I hope you are motivated as you enter the new year. Happy holidays!

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Lang, J. M. (2016). Small teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning.

Poole, G., & Simmons, N. (2013). The contributions of the scholarship of teaching and learning to quality enhancement in Canada. In G. Gordon, & R. Land (Eds.). Quality enhancement in higher education: International perspectives (pp. 118-128). London: Routledge.

* Disclaimer: The views expressed in this document are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U. S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U. S. Govt.


Using Communities of Practice to Support Online Educators in Fostering Student Metacognition in Virtual Classrooms

The second post in the “Working with Faculty to Promote Metacognition” guest series is from educational consultant Valencia Gabay, who writes about establishing communities of practice with faculty at a fully online institution to promote metacognition through the instructors’ own reflections on teaching.

by Valencia Gabay
Educational Consultant, Orlando, Florida
Doctoral Student, Organizational Leadership
Indiana Wesleyan University

In our society, the tides of change force students to be highly motivated, self-directed learners. However, authors Cameron and Quinn (2015) stated, “The implication in education is that we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, to use technologies that have not yet been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet” (p. 9). So, how do we prepare students to flourish in this brave new world? One answer: we inspire them to be intellectually curious and use their metacognitive knowledge.  But, we must first tap into our own metacognitive knowledge to support students in doing the same.

picture showing black and orange question marks on a black table

Metacognition is thinking about how you think and the ability to evaluate one’s use of knowledge in learning and decision-making processes (Halpern, 2015). And, like critical thinking, metacognitive skills can be taught even in a virtual learning environment. Our book, Group Coaching and Mentoring: A Framework for Fostering Organizational Change (Algozzini, Gabay, Voyles, Bessolo, & Batchelor, 2017) presented a unique professional development model in which the community of practice approach helped online instructors integrate metacognitive strategies into their instructional practices.

I use the study described in this book to illustrate how instructors, in collective learning spaces, can generate intellectual curiosity and metacognitive energy that is transferable to the virtual classroom (Algozzini et al., 2017). In this study, a faculty director at a fully online university placed 43 online instructors into six communities of practice, each facilitated by a mentor lead. Using web-based conferencing tools, communities of practice met weekly over approximately nine months to discuss information on metacognition and its value to their professional development. Communities of practice cultivated metacognitive energy in two distinct ways.

Using Self-reflection

First, leads used communities of practice to create moments for self-reflection. Instructors assessed their current teaching styles with their peers and examined ways metacognition could influence job performance. Reflection is paramount to enhancing metacognition, but it is essential to know how to question to prompt reflection. According to organizational psychologist and researcher Dr. Tasha Eurich (2017),

  • Why questions can draw us to our limitations;
  • What questions help us see our potential.
  • Why questions stir up negative emotions;
  • What questions keep us curious.
  • Why questions trap us in our past;
  • What questions help us create a better future. (Eurich, 2017, para. 13)

As such, our community leads used the following lines of questioning to encourage instructors to foster a stronger connection with metacognition.

  • In your own words, how would you define metacognition?
  • What does metacognition mean for you as an instructor?
  • What information from the resources about metacognition resonated with you the most?
  • How can you apply that information in the classroom setting to promote student success?

The reflective questioning sparked a renewed interest in intellectual wellbeing. Instructors saw themselves as learners, became aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and set attainable goals towards self-improvement. 

Creating Metacognitively-based Conversations

Second, instructors learned how to fashion metacognitively-based conversations. Those who question critically tend to be strong critical thinkers, and critical thinkers rely on metacognition to ensure their thinking processes will reach desired learning outcomes (Halpern, 2014). Therefore, the community leads challenged instructors to use open-ended questions to keep discussions robust when engaging with their colleagues in communities of practice meetings.  Additionally, instructors participated in exercises using Bloom’s Taxonomy to develop question stems that produced higher order thinking.

Impact for Online Instructors

In a survey, instructors reported that communities of practice provided a safe place for learning how to question and evaluate one’s skills. After working in communities of practice, instructors became more confident using metacognition to bridge gaps in their work performance (Algozzini et al., 2017). Most importantly, instructors possessed a model for generating intellectual curiosity and metacognition among their students. It started with teaching them the power of reflective questioning. This change in teaching style emerged through the prism of social, teaching, and cognitive presence (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2005).

Instructors increased their social presence and transformed their virtual classrooms into a community where students felt comfortable reflecting on what they learned. (Here is a collection of Tips for Creating Social Presence in Online Classrooms.) Instructors knew that students possess a teaching presence; they learn with and from each other. Therefore, instructors made learning content more relatable. They incorporated popular global or national issues relevant to the class discussion, so students could apply what they learned to real life examples. Finally, instructors strengthened their cognitive presence by using class forums to host metacognitively-based conversations. They challenged student thinking by asking open-ended questions and pushing them to support their claims with facts (Algozzini et al., 2017). As instructors demonstrated these tactics, students did the same among their peers.

Inspiring students to be intellectually curious begins with us recognizing that we as instructors are also learners who need to invest in our intellectual wellbeing to better serve the population we teach. We want students to know how to reflect and question as they develop into the thought leaders and global thinkers of tomorrow.  So, as you prepare your students for this brave new world, consider the following questions: How are you staying intellectually curious? In what ways are you using your metacognitive knowledge to support students to think and to question?

References

Algozzini, L., Gabay,V., Voyles, S., Bessolo, K., & Batchelor, G. (2017). Group coaching and mentoring: A framework for fostering organizational change. Campbell, CA: FastPencil, Inc. 

Cameron, K. S & Quinn, R.E. (2011). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture. San Francisco, CA:  John Wiley & Son, INC.

Eurich, T. (2017). The right way to be introspective: Yes, there’s a wrong way. Retrieved from https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/

Garrison, D. R., Anderson T., & Archer, W. (2010). The first decade of the community of inquiry framework: A retrospective. Internet and Higher Education, 13(1), 1–2.

Halpern, D. F. (2014). Thought and knowledge, An introduction to critical thinking, (5th ed.). New York, NY: Psychology Press.


Metacognitive Instruction: Suggestions for Faculty

by Audra Schaefer, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Neurobiology & Anatomical Sciences, University of Mississippi Medical Center

Intro: This guest editor miniseries, “The Evolution of Metacognition”, examines metacognition of students at various stages of education (undergraduate, graduate and professional), so is fitting to wrap up this miniseries on the evolution of metacognition with discussion of faculty and metacognitive instruction. As educators we often find ourselves focused on enhancing the metacognition of our students.  Yet, in order for us to continue to improve/develop as teachers it is important for us to apply similar metacognitive approaches to our teaching.  This final post of the series will include my experiences in being a metacognitively aware educator and evidence-based suggestions for educators at any level who are looking to employ metacognition in their teaching. ~ Audra Schaefer, PhD, guest editor

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Being a teacher is not simple.  Teaching goes well beyond a content expert delivering information into the minds of students.  Harden and Crosby (2000) describe twelve roles of teachers that can be grouped into the broader roles of information provider, role model, facilitator, examiner, planner and resource developer. Effectively carrying out all of these roles can become a time consuming process, and while our focus is on our students, it’s important for us to step back and reflect on ourselves.  How effectively are we carrying out the various roles we manage in the process of teaching?

This seemingly straightforward question can be complicated to answer. Assessing yourself in the various roles encompassed by teaching may fall to the side when an instructor is unsure how to perform those roles in the first place. Educators in higher education often receive little to no explicit training in effective teaching methods and likely aren’t receiving much experience with learning theories.  So, naturally, instructors end up doing what they experienced as a student or mimicking what their colleagues are doing in class.  While this isn’t inherently problematic, simply doing it because that is what you experienced, or even because it works for someone else, is insufficient reasoning to keep doing it.

A metacognitive instructor asks why they are proceeding in a particular manner. How does this approach help you reach the goals you have for your course? How does it help your students achieve the objectives you’ve set for them? By the time an individual begins teaching at any level they’ve encountered plenty of situations that required them to apply problem-solving skills, be it in daily life or applying the scientific method to research. Why then as educators would we not apply the same concepts to our teaching?

What additional kinds of questions can, and perhaps should, metacognitive instructors be asking themselves?  If we consider that planning, monitoring and evaluating are all core components of metacognitive regulation (Schraw, 2006), these provide logical stages for instructors to reflect.  In my own experience, being reflective in each step is incredibly useful for improving the same session in future semesters, as well as preparing for other similar sessions.  The following are examples of questions I frequently ask myself, and if you’re interested in finding additional questions, Kimberly Tanner (2012) has a well-written article that provides numerous questions for faculty to ask students and to ask themselves in an effort to promote metacognition. 

When planning a course or class session, consider not only what your goals are for that course or session, but how you plan to reach those goals.  What do students already know about the topic for that session and how do you know what they know? 

In the middle of a class session it is useful to keep tabs on the session pace and to be adaptable in the moment to make improvements as you go.  What do I notice about student behavior in a given session and what might be the cause?  After a session, and after a course is completed I also take the time to think about how I want to change things and why I want to change them in the future. A common thread here being the “why”.  Why do I do what I do? Why did the students respond the way they did? Why would I make a particular change?

the word "Why" written using question marks

Finally, I’ve found modeling metacognitive behaviors to be quite useful with my students (Tanner, 2012).  When discussing challenging topics with students I make a deliberate effort to think about what aspects of that topic gave me difficulty when I first learned it, and then I make a point to explain that topic to the students in a way that helped me (or past students) make sense of it. 

For example, in neuroanatomy there are numerous pathways in the brain and spinal cord that become confusing very quickly.  I frequently teach these by creating the same simplified drawings I made as a student to sort out these pathways.  I also encourage students to draw with me in class to engage them during a lecture, and numerous students have commented that they begin drawing on their own while studying, an approach that they had not previously used.

I also make a point to model how to proceed when faced with a limitation in my knowledge. This has become an important goal for me in my teaching because I’ve noticed many students struggle to recognize what they do and do not know, or struggle with how to proceed when they don’t know something. Earlier in this miniseries, Dr. Husmann and Dr. Hoffman each provided examples of undergraduate and medical students struggling with metacognition, demonstrating that these difficulties span multiple educational levels. We can shape our instruction to students of any educational stage to gain a sense of their current skill level(s) and adjust our teaching to help improve those skills.

In class, when I am inevitably asked a question to which I do not have an answer, I own it and don’t make a big deal out of it. I share what I do know and then proceed to either have them help me research the answer, or I follow up with them to be sure that we’ve all learned from it.  Although I haven’t explicitly assessed whether it’s having any effect on students, I am getting little bits of data to suggest there are at least a few students who’ve noticed.  One of my favorites is this comment from a medical student after completing a neuroscience course I taught, “If she has taught me anything (besides a lot of Neuro) is that it is okay to not know the answer, we aren’t always going to know everything and it’s completely okay.” 

As educators, at any level, we serve as role models. If we expect our students to become better at regulating their learning, we should expect the same of ourselves. In the first post of this miniseries Caroline Mueller discussed how as a graduate student she is working to implement metacognitive approaches to both her learning and teaching. Regardless of your experience with teaching, metacognitive instruction can help you continue to improve. Our attitudes and mindset are important for setting the tone for a classroom environment. If we aim to help our students develop their metacognitive skills, we should aim to do so ourselves.

Harden, R.M., & J. Crosby. (2000). AMEE Guide No 20: The good teacher is more than a lecturer – the twelve roles of the teacher. Medical Teacher, 22:4, 334-347.

Schraw, G., Crippen, K.J., & K. Hartley. (2006). Promoting self-regulation in science education: Metacognition as a part of a broader perspective on learning. Research in Science Education, 36, 111-139.

Tanner, K.D. (2012). Promoting Student Metacognition. CBE – Life Sciences Education, 11, 113-120. [https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/promoting-student-metacognition/]


Metacognition, the Representativeness Heuristic, and the Elusive Transfer of Learning

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

When we instructors think about student learning, we often default to immediate learning in our courses. However, when we take a moment to reflect on our big picture learning goals, we typically realize that we want much more than that. We want our students to engage in transfer of learning, and our hopes can be grand indeed…

  • We want our students to show long-term retention of our material so that they can use it in later courses, sometimes even beyond those in our disciplines.
  • We want our students to use what they’ve learned in our course as they go through life, helping them both in their profession and in their personal lives.

These grander learning goals often involve learning of ways of thinking that we endeavor to develop, such as critical thinking and information literacy. And, for those of us who believe in the broad value of metacognition, we want our students to develop metacognition skills. But, as some of us have argued elsewhere (Scharff, Draeger, Verpoorten, Devlin, Dvorak, Lodge & Smith 2017), metacognition might be key for the transfer of learning and not just a skill we want our students to learn and then use in our course.

Metacognition involves engaging in intentional awareness of a process and using that awareness to guide subsequent behavioral choices (self-regulation). In our 2017 paper, we argued that students don’t engage in transfer of learning because they aren’t aware of the similarities of context or process that would indicate that some sort of learning transfer would be useful or appropriate. What we didn’t explore in that paper is why that first step might be so difficult.

If we look to research in cognitive psychology, we can find a possible answer to that question – the representativeness heuristic. Heuristics are mental short-cuts based on assumptions built from prior experience. There are several different heuristics (e.g. representativeness heuristic, availability heuristic, anchoring heuristic). They allow us to more quickly and efficiently respond to the world around us. Most of the time they serve us well, but sometimes they don’t.

The representativeness heuristic occurs when we attend to obvious characteristics of some type of group (objects, people, contexts) and then use those characteristics to categorize new instances as part of that group. If obvious characteristics aren’t shared, then the new instances are categorized separately.

  • photo of cows in a field
  • photo of horses in a field

For example, if a child is out in the countryside for the first time, she might see a four-legged animal in the field. She might be familiar with dogs from her home. When she sees the four-legged creature in the field, so might immediately characterize the new creature as a dog based on that characteristic. Her parents will correct her, and say, “No. Those are cows. They say moo moo. They live in fields.” The young girl next sees a horse in a field. She might proudly say, “Look another cow!” Her patient parents will now have to add characteristics that will help her differentiate between cows and horses, and so on. At some level, however, the young girl must also learn meta-characteristics that make all these animals connected as mammals: warm-blooded, furred, live-born, etc. Some of these characteristics may be less obvious from a glance across a field.

Now – how might this natural, human way-of-thinking impact transfer of learning in academics?

  • To start, what are the characteristics of academic situations that support the use of the representative heuristic in ways that decrease the likelihood of transfer of learning?
  • In response, how might metacognition help us encourage transfer of learning?

There are many aspects of the academic environment that might answer the first question – anything that leads us to perceive differences rather than connections. For example, math is seen as a completely different domain than literature, chemistry, or political science. The content and the terminology used by each discipline are different. The classrooms are typically in different buildings and may look very different (chemistry labs versus lecture halls or small group active learning classrooms), none of which look or feel like the physical environments in “real life” beyond academics. Thus, it’s not surprising that students do not transfer learning across classes, much less beyond classes.

In response to the second question, I believe that metacognition can help increase the transfer of learning because both mental processes rely on awareness/attention as a first step. Representativeness categorization depends on the characteristics that are attended. Without conscious effort, the attended characteristics are likely to be those most superficially obvious, which in academics tend to highlight differences rather than connections.

But, with some guidance and encouragement, other less obvious characteristics can become more salient. If these additional characteristics cross course/disciplinary/academic boundaries, then opportunities for transfer will enter awareness. The use of this awareness to guide behavior, transfer of learning in this case, is the second step in metacognition.

Therefore, there are multiple opportunities for instructors to promote learning transfer, but we might have to become more metacognitive about the process in order to do so. First we must develop awareness of connections that will promote transfer, rather than remaining within the comfort zone of their disciplinary expertise. Then we must use that awareness and self-regulate our interactions with students to make those connections salient to students. We can further increase the likelihood of transfer behaviors by communicating their value.

We typically can’t do much about the different physical classroom environments that reinforce the distinctions between our courses and nonacademic environments. Thus, we need to look for and explicitly communicate other types of connections. We can share examples to bridge terminology differences and draw parallels across disciplinary processes.

For example, we can point out that creating hypotheses in the sciences is much like creating arguments in the humanities. These disciplinary terms sound like very different words, but both involve a similar process of thinking. Or we can point out that MLA and APA writing formats are different in the details, but both incorporate respect for citing others’ work and give guidance for content organization that makes sense for the different disciplines. These meta-characteristics unite the two formatting approaches (as well as others that students might later encounter) with a common set of higher-level goals. Without such framing, students are less likely to appreciate the need for formatting and may interpret the different styles as arbitrary busywork that doesn’t deserve much thought.

We can also explicitly share what we know about learning in general, which also crosses disciplinary boundaries. A human brain is involved regardless of whether it’s learning in the social sciences, the humanities, the STEM areas, or the non-academic professional world. In fact, Scharff et al (2017) found significant positive correlations between thinking about learning transfer and thinking about learning processes and the likelihood to use awareness of metacognition to guide practice.

Cognitive psychologists know that we can reduce errors that occur from relying on heuristics if we turn conscious attention to the processes involved and disengage from the automatic behaviors in which we tend to engage. Similarly, as part of a metacognitive endeavor, we can help our students become aware of connections rather than differences across learning domains, and encourage behaviors that promote transfer of learning.

Scharff, L., Draeger, J., Verpoorten , D., Devlin, M., Dvorakova, L., Lodge, J. & Smith, S. (2017). Exploring Metacognition as Support for Learning Transfer. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, Vol 5, No. 1. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20343/5.1.6 A Summary of this work can also be found at https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/researching-metacognition/

* Disclaimer: The views expressed in this document are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U. S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U. S. Govt.


Embedding Metacognition into New Faculty Orientation

By Lauren Scharff, Ph.D., U. S. Air Force Academy *

When and how might faculty become aware of metacognition in general, how student metacognition might enhance student learning, and how personal metacognition might enhance their own teaching? Ideally, faculty learned about metacognition as students and thereafter consciously engaged in metacognitive practices as learners and developing professionals. Based on conversations with many faculty members, however, this is not the case. It certainly wasn’t the case for me. I don’t remember even hearing the term metacognition until after many years of working as a professor. Even now most new faculty seem to only have a vague familiarity with the term “metacognition” itself, and few claim to have spent much time considering how reflection and self-regulation, key components of metacognition, should be part of their own practice or part of the skill set they plan to help develop in their students.

While this reality is not ideal (at least for those of us true believers in the power of metacognition), realization of this lack of understanding about metacognition provides opportunities for faculty development. And why not start right at the beginning when faculty attend new faculty orientation?

New Faculty Orientation

At my institution this summer, we did just that. Our Director of Faculty Development, Dr. Marc Napolitano, worked the topic into his morning session on student learning. We designed a follow-on, small-group discussion session that encouraged faculty to actively engage in reading, personal application, and discussion of metacognition.

The reading we chose was one of my favorite metacognition articles, Promoting Student Metacognition, by Dr. Kimberly Tanner (2012). The session was only 40 minutes, so we only had them read a few pages of the article for the exercise, including her Table 1, which provides a series of questions students can ask themselves when planning, monitoring, evaluating their learning for a class session, while completing homework, while preparing for an exam. We had the new faculty jot down some reflections based on their responses to several guided prompts. Then we had time for discussion. I facilitated one of the small groups and was thus able to first-hand hear some of their responses.

Example questions:

  • What type of student were you as an undergraduate? Did you ever change your approach to learning as you went through school?
  • You obviously achieved success as an undergraduate, but do you think that you could have been more successful if you had better understood the science of learning and had teachers incorporate it into their courses?
  • If you had to share a definition of metacognition [from the reading] with students – and explain to them why it is an essential practice in learning – which definition would you use and how would you frame it with students?
  • If you wished to incorporate metacognition into your class, what approach(es) currently seems most practical for you? Why?
  • Which 3-4 of the questions in Table 1 seem like they would most helpful to use in your class? Why do these questions stand out, and how might they shape your class?

The discussion following the reading and reflection time was very rich. Only one member of my group of eight reported a good prior understanding of metacognition and how it could be incorporated into course design (she had just finished a PhD in physics education). Two others reported having vague prior familiarity with the term. However, after participating in these two faculty development sessions, all of them agreed that learning about the science of learning would have been valuable as a student regardless of level (K-12 through graduate school).

The faculty in my group represent a wide variety of disciplines, so the ways of incorporating metacognition and the questions from the table in the reading that most appealed to them varied. However, that is one of the wonderful things about designing courses or teaching practices to support student metacognition – there are many ways to do so. Thus, it’s not a problem to fit them to your way of teaching and your desired course outcomes.

We also spent a little time discussing metacognitive instruction: being aware of their choices as instructors and their students’ engagement and success, and using that awareness to guide their subsequent choices as instructors to support their students’ learning. They quickly understood the parallels with student metacognitive learning (students being aware of their choices and whether or not those choices are leading to success, and using that awareness to guide subsequent choices related to their learning). Our small groups will continue to meet throughout the coming year as a continuation of our new faculty development process. I look forward to continuing our conversations and further supporting them in becoming metacognitive instructors and promoting their students’ development as metacognitive learners.

————

Tanner, K. (2012). Promoting student metacognition. CBE—Life Sciences Education; Vol. 11, 113–120

* Disclaimer: The views expressed in this document are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U. S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U. S. Govt.


Fundamental concepts and bottlenecks as guides to metacognitive instruction

by John Draeger, SUNY Buffalo State

In an earlier post, Lauren Scharff and I argued that metacognition can help instructors select and apply appropriate teaching strategies (Draeger & Scharff, 2016). More specifically, we argued that metacognition encourages instructors to consider the particulars of each learning environment (e.g., student background, learning goals, classroom culture) and we offered a series of question prompts to guide the conversation (e.g., what are you doing to check-in with students? What strategy adjustments might you make?). This post extends that work by offering two additional conceptual anchors to ground discussion, namely fundamental concepts and bottlenecks.

First, fundamental concepts can serve as a conceptual anchor for metacognitive instruction. Gerald Nosich describes fundamental and powerful concepts as those “core ideas used to organize other ideas and unlock important questions, insights, and discoveries” (Nosich, 2012). When designing a course, fundamental concepts guide my decisions regarding how much to cover and how much time to devote to a particular topic. As I am making choices, I ask myself “how does this material help students better understand the fundamental concept of the course?” In assessment, I want my assignments to align with the most important aspects of the course and fundamental concepts articulate those important features. And in class instruction, fundamental concepts guide class conversation and provide a mechanism for refocusing peripheral lines of questioning. Therefore, if metacognitive instruction encourages me to be intentional about my learning objectives and student progress towards achieving them, then fundamental concepts serve as a constant reminder to me (and my students) of what is most important.

By way of illustration, the concept of justice is fundamental concept to my upper division course in philosophy of law. The course readings are roughly subdivided into theoretical discussions that articulate particular philosophical conceptions of justice (e.g., procedural, moral) and applications in the law (e.g., landmark United States Supreme court cases). The theories illuminate elements in the court cases and the cases provide illustrations of the theoretical features. Without explicit reference to a fundamental concept, the course can seem like an endless list of court cases with each case, and each detail of each case, seeming as important as all the others. Through an explicit focus on the fundamental concept, however, the course is organized around a conceptual web with justice at the center and theories and cases emanating out in order of importance (e.g., theories can articulate conceptions of justice and cases can be organized according to those conceptions). As someone aspiring to practice metacognitive instruction, I regularly check-in with students and make adjustments based on class discussion. When students seem to be “in the weeds,” I can use the concept of justice (and our various conceptions of it) as a way to refocus the conversation on what is most important to the course. We can then build back the details of the theories and the cases. Further, some students relish the details of cases, but they are less inclined to consider how the cases illustrate the theories that we’ve been reading. Again, the concept of justice allows me to reframe class conversation and build back the structural details of the course (e.g., theories of justice, court cases). Finally, I make adjustments in my preparation between class sessions based on my informal assessment of student understanding in relation to the fundamental concept. In this way, fundamental concepts work in conjunction with my efforts to be a metacognitive instructor.

A second type of conceptual anchor for metacognitive instruction can be found by considering the bottlenecks of a given course. Middendorf and Pace (2004) describe course bottlenecks as aspects of the course (concepts/skills) that are both essential to the course and places where students consistently struggle. Students in my philosophy of law courses, for example, often confuse descriptive claims (how things are) with normative claims (how things should be). This confusion can cause students to be frustrated by class discussion and flummoxed by written assignments. For example, students in the grips of this confusion tend to focus on the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court reached a decision by a 5-4 margin without considering that it can (or perhaps even should have been otherwise). They reason that if the court ruled this way, then that’s the end of the story (descriptive claim about how the law is). These students tend not to consider whether the court might have been mistaken in their ruling (a normative question). Even if these students memorize court rulings and the rationale for those decisions, they have not yet engaged with the normative underpinnings of the course (e.g., whether a particular ruling is just). As someone trying to practice metacognitive instruction, I need to monitor student progress and make necessary adjustments. Bottlenecks (e.g., student struggles with normative questions) give me a predictable place to check-in and refocus student attention.

Moreover, given that the fact I can anticipate that students are likely to struggle with normative questions (the bottleneck of the course), I am more intentional about course design, instruction, and feedback on assessment. For example, I intentionally begin the course with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” because King’s argument makes it clear that there is such a thing as an unjust law. We then follow up by considering a number of landmark cases early in the semester, such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. In the former, the court supported the “separate but equal” doctrine. In the latter, they rejected it. We talk about what made the Plessy unjust and why Brown readdresses that injustice. This launches into more theoretical discussions about the types of reasoning offered in those decisions and how they are related to the fundamental concept of justice. By considering these cases, students have early illustrations of a just and unjust law (normative claims). This exercise becomes a touchstone for later in the semester when students struggle with the descriptive and normative distinction. Because metacognitive instruction demands that I regularly check-in, I am tuned into the fact that students are often stuck in the normative bottleneck . When this happens, we can revisit our conversations about King, Plessy and Brown. Moreover, if this teaching strategy doesn’t work, then I know that I need to choose another strategy. Student understanding will be stymied unless I can help them overcome predictable confusions. Clearing the bottleneck, therefore, can open up learning opportunities, but clearing the bottleneck only happens if I am aware of student difficulties and willing to make changes (i.e. metacognitive instruction).

This post has built on the thought that metacognitive instruction can help instructors choose appropriate instructional strategies. In particular, fundamental concepts can help instructors be intentional and explicit about what is most important about their courses. Likewise, locating consistent sources of student difficulty can help frame where and how instructional energies can be best spent. In short, both fundamental concepts and bottlenecks ground metacognitive instruction by providing anchor points and guiding instructors towards promising teaching strategies.

References

Draeger, J. & Scharff, L. (2016). “Using Metacognition to select and apply appropriate teaching strategies.”Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/using-metacognition-select-apply-appropriate-teaching-strategies/

Middendorf, J., & Pace, D. (2004). Decoding the disciplines: A model for helping students learn disciplinary ways of thinking. New directions for teaching and learning, 2004(98), 1-12.

Nosich, G. (2012) Learning to think things through: A guide to critical thinking across the disciplines. Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.


Metacognition and Teacher-Student-Curriculum Relationships

by Steven Fleisher, Ph.D., California State University Channel Islands

I have heard many express that teacher-student relationships have nothing in common with families. But while teacher-student relationships are best described as collegial, at least within higher-education, this author believes that much can be learned from family theories and research. In particular, family research provides insights into how to support the development of trust in this context rather than relationships based principally on compliance. In other words, a classroom “is” a family, whether it’s a good one or a bad one. In this posting, we will explore metacognitive processes involved in building and maintaining stable relationships between students and the curriculum, teachers and the curriculum, and between teachers and students.

Family systems theory (Kerr & Bowen, 1988), though originally developed for clinical practice, offers crucial insights into not only teacher-student relationships but teaching and learning as well (Harrison, 2011). While there are many interlocking principles within family systems theory, we will concentrate on emotional stability, differentiation of self, and triangles.

The above triangle provides a representation for the following relationships: students-curriculum, teacher-curriculum, and teacher-students. Although any effective pedagogy would work for this discussion, we will focus specifically on the usefulness of knowledge surveys in this context (http://elixr.merlot.org/assessment-evaluation/knowledge-surveys/knowledge-surveys2) and their role in building metacognitive self-assessment skills.[1] Thus, what are some of the metacognitive processes involved in the relationships on each leg of our triangle? And, what are some of the metacognitive processes that would support those relationships in becoming increasingly stable?

Student-Curriculum Relationships

Along one leg of the triangle, students would increase the stability of their relationships with the curriculum as a function of becoming ever more aware of their learning processes. Regarding the use of knowledge surveys, students would self-assess their confidence to respond to given challenges, compare those responses with their developed competencies, and follow with reflective exercises to discover and understand any gaps between the two. As their self-assessment accuracy improves, their self-regulation skills would improve as well, i.e., adjusting, modifying, or deepening learning strategies or efforts as needed. So, the more students are aware of competencies in the curriculum and the more aware they are of their progress towards those competencies, the better off students will be.

As part of a course, instructors can also guide students in exploring how the material is useful to them personally. Activities can be designed to support exploration and discovery of ways in which course material relates, for example, to career interests, personal growth, interdisciplinary objectives, fostering of purpose, etc. In so doing, the relationships students have with the material can gain greater stability. Ertmer and Newby (1996) noted that expertise in learning involves becoming “strategic, self-regulated, and reflective”, and by bringing these types of exercises into the course, students are supported in the development of all these competencies.

Teacher-Curriculum Relationships

These relationships involve teachers becoming more aware of their practices, their student’s learning, and the connection between their practices and their student’s learning. In other words, the teacher is trying to ensure fit between student understanding and curriculum. Regarding knowledge surveys, teachers would know they are providing a pedagogical tool that supports learning and offers needed visibility for students.

In addition, once teachers have laid out course content in their knowledge surveys, they can look ahead and anticipate which learning strategies would be the best match for upcoming material. Realizing ahead of time the benefits of, let’s say, using structured group work for a particular learning module, teachers could prepare themselves and their students for that type of activity.

Teacher-Student Relationships

These relationships involve the potential for the development of trust. When trust develops in a classroom, students not only know what the expectations involve but are set more at ease to explore creatively their understanding and ways of understanding the material. For instance, students may well become aware of the genuine and honest help being provided by chosen learning strategies. Knowledge surveys are particularly useful in this regard as students have a roadmap for the course and a tool structured to facilitate the improvement of their learning skills.

Teachers also have an interpersonal role in supporting the development of student trust. Family systems theory (Bowen & Kerr, 1988) holds that we all vary in our levels of self-differentiation, which involves how much we, literally, realize that we are separate from others, especially during emotional conflict. In other words, people vary in their abilities to manage emotional reactivity (founded in anxiety) with being able to use one’s intellect to compose chosen and valued responses. Harrison (2011), in applying these principles in a classroom, noted that when teachers are aware of becoming emotionally reactivity (i.e., defensive), but are also aware of using their intellect, as best as possible, to manage the situation (i.e., remaining thoughtful and unbiased in their interactions with students), they are supporting emotional stability and trust.

Kerr and Bowen (1988) also reported that self-differentiation involves distinguishing between thoughts and feelings. This principle gives us another metacognitive tool. When we are aware, for example, that others do not “make” us feel a certain way (i.e., frustrated), but that it involves also our thinking (i.e., students are just being lazy), this affects our ability to manage reactivity. If we are aware of becoming reactive, and aware of distinguishing thoughts and feelings, we can notice and reframe our thoughts (i.e., students are just doing what they need to do), and validate and own our emotions (i.e., okay I’m frustrated), then we are better positioned to respond in ways that attune to our needs as well as those of our students. In this way, we would increase our level of self-differentiation by moving toward less blaming and more autonomy.

Final Note

Kerr and Bowen (1988) also said that supporting stability along all the relationships represented by our triangle not only increases the emotional stability of the system, but provides a cushion for the naturally arising instabilities along individual legs of the triangle. This presence of this stability also serves to further enhance the impact of effective pedagogies. So, when teachers are aware of maintaining the efficacy of their learning strategies, and are aware of applying the above principles of self-differentiation, i.e. engaging in metacognitive instruction, they are better positioned to be responsive and attuned to the needs of their students, thus supporting stability, trust, and improved learning.

References

Ertmer, P. A. & Newby, T. J. (1996). The expert learner: Strategic, self-regulated, and reflective. Instructional Science, 24(1), 1-24. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/journal/11251

Harrison, V. A. (2011). Live learning: Differentiation of self as the basis for learning. In O.C. Bregman & C. M. White (Eds.), Bringing systems thinking to life: Expanding the horizons for Bowen family systems theory (pp. 75-87). New York, NY: Routledge.

Kerr, M. E. & Bowen, M. (1988). Family evaluation: An approach based on Bowen theory. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

Image from: https://www.slideshare.net/heatherpanda/essay-2-for-teaching-course-4

[1] Knowledge surveys are comprised of a detailed listing of all learning outcomes for a course (perhaps 150-250 items). Each item begins with an affective root (“I can…”) followed by a cognitive or ability challenge expressed in measurable terms (“…describe at least three functions of the pituitary gland.”). These surveys provide students with a roadmap for the course and a tool structured for building their confidence and accuracy in learning skills.


Teaching Transformation Through Becoming a Student of Learning

by Patrick Cunningham, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology,
Holly Matusovich & Sarah Williams, Virginia Tech

 Downloadable

Motivations and context:

I teach a variety of Mechanical Engineering courses at a small private undergraduate institution with approximately 2000 students. The courses I teach focus on the application of scientific theory and math to solve engineering problems. Since I started teaching I have been interested in how to help students to learn more deeply in my courses. This eventually led me to a sabbatical in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, where I established a research partnership with Dr. Holly Matusovich, and later Ms. Sarah Williams, studying student metacognitive development. We have been interested in how to help students to become more sophisticated and lifelong learners and how to aid instructors in supporting this student development. This collaboration initiated a research-to-practice cycle, where my interest in enhancing student learning led to research on student metacognitive development, and research results have influenced my teaching practice.

Description of the process:

The research-to-practice cycle has transformed my teaching by helping me become a student of learning. For me the process has involved formal educational research, but it does not have to. My implementation of the cycle follows:

  1. Identify what teaching and learning issue you care about and develop partnerships.
  2. Plan the study.
  3. Implement the study and analyze the data.
  4. Interpret the results and use them to direct modifications to your teaching.
  5. Repeat steps 1-4.

I am interested in enhancing student learning and that led to collaborative metacognition research with Dr. Matusovich. Other possible partnerships may be with colleagues, your teaching and learning center, disciplinary education researchers (e.g., engineering or physics education), or even education researchers at your own institution (e.g., educational or cognitive psychology).

We planned the research through the preparation of a successfully funded NSF grant proposal. The process included establishing research questions, specifying study phases, determining what data to collect and how, and planning for data analysis. Even if you are not engaging in formal research, the quality and success of your study will depend on a well laid out plan. As a mechanical engineering professor, my collaborators proved to be indispensable partners for this.

Early in our research, we gathered baseline data through student interviews on how students approach learning in engineering science courses and how they define learning. We have found that students predominantly rely on working and reviewing example problems as a means of learning. This approach to learning falls into the category of rehearsal strategies, where students are seeking to memorize steps and match patterns rather than develop a richer conceptual understanding. While it is important to know facts, results from learning science show rehearsal strategies are insufficient for developing adequate conceptual frameworks that are necessary for transferring concepts to new situations and being able to explain their understanding effectively to others – key aspects of engineering work. To construct such rich conceptual frameworks students also need to engage in elaborative and organizational learning strategies, but students reported underutilization of these strategies. Students’ overreliance on example problems does not align with being able to apply course concepts to real-world problems.

In reviewing the data, I also realized that I might be part of the problem. My teaching and assessments had been primarily organized around working problems with little variation. The research helped me change. I decided to scaffold students’ use of a broader range of monitoring, elaborative, and organizational strategies by changing my approach to teaching. I realized that I could empower my students by helping them learn about and refine their learning skills – even as I teach the content of the course.

I made significant changes to my course. I changed the grade category for “homework” to “development activities” to include the regular homework, and new homework learning check quizzes and video quizzes. These quizzes provided low-stakes opportunities for formative feedback to students about their conceptual understanding. I also changed my classroom activities, engaging students in evaluating and explaining given solutions with errors, recall practice, interrogating examples with “what if” questions and answering them, and creating problems for specific concepts. For the next project steps, we are collecting data on these implementations so the research-to-practice cycle can begin again.

Outcomes:

My students performed at least as well on traditional problem solving exams as students in other sections of the same course. Importantly, they reported feeling more responsible for their learning and that they had to exert more effort in their learning than in other engineering science courses. For me, this has been a more fulfilling teaching experience. Not only have I found that students asked better questions about course content, but I also had more conversations with students about how they can learn more effectively and efficiently. It has added rigor and a clarity of purpose in my teaching that reaches beyond course content.

Lessons learned:

I learned to articulate the differences between my course and other courses and to get buy-in from students as to what I was trying to do. As a teacher, student resistance to change can be hard but it is worth it to improve teaching and learning experiences. Collaborative partnerships help!

Acknowledgement:

The metacognition research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 1433757, 1433645, & 1150384. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.


Practicing Metacognitive Instruction Informs Continuous Class Improvement While Reinforcing Student Self-Awareness of Learning

by Lara Watkins (Bridgewater State University
lwatkins@bridgew.edu)

 Downloadable

Motivations and background:

I have been teaching a course titled “Anthropology of race, class and gender” for about five years at a state university. As a course that covers requirements for the core curriculum as well as for anthropology majors, the student population is diverse with first year through final semester students including both majors and non-majors. The course is taught in person with about 25 students per section.

I implemented a series of mid-course reflections for a variety of reasons. (1) I sought to encourage students to reflect upon their learning in the course as a way of helping them to recognize and assess their own learning over time, while (2) simultaneously providing an indicator of the main messages being retained by students to help in course planning for the future. The reflection served as a low stakes evaluation of learning, which then fed into continuous course improvement. Pragmatically, I was interested in (3) if there were specific barriers to student comprehension of the material that might make a substitute reading or focused classroom interventions appropriate. Since student metacognition about their learning can inform metacognitive instruction, I also sought (4) to assess the degree to which students saw value in a particular reading and (5) could link it to other course materials and their own learning, thereby encouraging learning across multiple levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Krathwohl, 2002).

Nuts and Bolts / Procedure:

Each semester, I incorporate four in-class, mid-course reflections. Students completed each pen-and-paper reflection in about five minutes. They had the option of handing in the reflection anonymously or adding their name to the form. Each mid-course reflection was about 3-5 questions long. The first question always asks students to state a few key points that they have learned in that particular section of the course, while the last question always provides students a place to anonymously raise questions and concerns. The middle questions vary depending on my evolving concerns or interests.

The middle questions on the reflection example shared here focused on the use of a full-length book; however, in general, the middle questions focus on a specific aspect of that portion of the course (e.g. a reading, the use of an online learning tool, etc.), that obviously is assigned to deepen learning, but through which student experiences could provide insight on the degree to which there are barriers to this ultimate goal. My goal in this particular example was to find out if students were engaged in the reading, if they were taking away the main ideas, and if there were noted challenges that could be mitigated in future iterations of the course.

Outcomes and Lessons Learned:

  • The first question (which asked for students to summarize what they had learned across a few weeks of the course) provides a useful snapshot of the main messages interpreted and retained by students. Through assessing student summary of information in question one, I have found that students were not able to reiterate key points to the same degree across different portions of the course, thereby suggesting which particular section(s) of the course needed further elaboration and attention in later semesters.
  • For this particular reflection example, I found that the students’ perspectives of the book did not align with my anticipation of their perspective. (The students were more positive than I expected.) Checking in with students throughout the semester helps to give the instructor a tangible and direct indicator of student interpretations of the course and course materials. This can feed into continuous course improvement.
  • This course meets twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays. A key lesson learned from the student feedback is that they need lengthier readings to be due on the Monday. While this might appear intuitive, instructors sometimes lose sight of student logistics when constructing their syllabi and the multitude of topics to be covered. It also highlights the need to build in multiple, explicit reminders for students to start lengthy readings in advance.
  • Instructors implementing a similar activity in class will want to consider the benefits and drawbacks to allowing for anonymous submission. I chose for the feedback to be anonymous by default so that students would feel comfortable sharing their honest assessments and could clearly let me know if they had not completed the reading without feeling that it would impair their grade in any way. If instructors would like to track progress over time for individual students, then they may desire to have students identify themselves.   I have found it appropriate to individually email students who identify their name and raise a specific question/concern. Students often express gratitude for the personal outreach as it directly addresses a question or concern that they have, thereby decreasing their perceived barriers to success, and it conveys respect and concern for their individual learning trajectory, thereby cultivating a supportive learning climate.

This reflective approach provides a series of quick and useful indicators of student learning that I can use as an instructor to adjust my teaching and better support my students’ learning. A second benefit is that they help center the students’ attention on the metacognitive and higher-order processes of remembering, connecting, analyzing, and evaluating course concepts. Providing short assessments like this at a few time points across the semester is an easy way to “take the pulse” of a particular class and then use that feedback to identify teaching practices that are working well and those that might need to be tweaked. Metacognitive instruction leads to continuous course improvement and, ultimately, to better facilitation of student learning.

Reference

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41, 212-218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4104_2


The Mutual Benefits of Metacognition for Faculty and Students

by Dr. Marc Napolitano, U. S. Air Force Academy

I recently hosted a faculty discussion circle that was meant to serve as a capstone to the 2016-17 school year. As such, I thought that structuring this discussion around the theme of “reflection” would be most appropriate; after all, what better time than the end of term to reflect upon one’s teaching? Still, even as I announced and planned this event, I wrestled with the question of whether I was doing a disservice to the all-important process of reflection by framing it as an “end of term” activity (as opposed to framing it as a perpetual activity that one undertakes on a continuous basis over the course of a long period of time.) Reflection invariably involves turning inward, but it does not necessarily involve looking backward (despite the fact that the literal meaning of “reflect” is “to bend or turn (something) back.”)

Upon reviewing several readings to share with the faculty in the discussion circle, I noted an excellent blog post by Maryellen Weimer on Faculty Focus. In this piece, Weimer stresses how carving out time for reflection benefits college faculty in four overarching ways:

  • Integration: reflection can help us to “connect the dots” between different experiences that define our teaching.
  • Taking stock: reflection can help us to put things in perspective (especially in the case of challenging experiences).
  • Lifelong learning: reflection is intimately connected with lifelong learning and allows us to continue growing.
  • Private space: reflection allows us to turn inward and carve out a place/space for ourselves.

None of these four examples is restricted to contemplating the past (indeed, 2 and 4 deal with the present, and 3 looks toward the future.)

In light of my concerns, I was very pleased when the faculty who constituted our discussion circle steered the conversation toward sustained metacognition, as opposed to restricting the discussion to retrospective reflections. Not only did this strategy allow for a more dynamic discussion about past, present, and future, but it likewise reinforced the importance of taking a process approach to both teaching and learning. As a group, we agreed that the by taking the time to plan out what we are doing in the classroom, monitoring our own progress, and assessing the results of our endeavors, we invariably grow as teachers; students who take a similarly deliberate approach to learning often cultivate a parallel sense of progress and development.

Indeed, as our conversation progressed, I was fascinated to note how what was being said about metacognition seemed to apply equally to both faculty and students – teachers and learners. For example, on the most basic level, one faculty member pointed out how metacognition prompts him to strive toward better teaching because it promotes his cultivating an analytical insight into what he does well and what he needs to improve upon. Such insight is likewise vital to students regarding their learning processes, though as a group, we agreed that it is oftentimes necessary for faculty to carve out time for (and to model) metacognition for our pupils. Students rarely gravitate toward it instinctively. One professor noted that she frequently asks her students to explain to her “how are you trying to learn?”, and that most of her pupils are struck dumb the first time they consider the matter, for they have never before taken the time to consider learning as a process. The professor’s insightful “how?” question again made us think about the overlap between teaching and learning, and we discussed the value of asking ourselves “how do you explain this subject to someone with no familiarity or understanding of it?” Again, if we do not turn inward and think about processes, we run the risk of skipping vital steps that our students will need to take – steps that we, as experts, may take for granted – as they begin their journey in the discipline (and their journey toward lifelong learning).

One final parallel that we noted during our discussion was that metacognition promoted a vitalizing adaptability in both us and our students. By utilizing metacognition and considering how different contexts require us to employ different processes, we can develop a wide repertoire of pedagogical skills and methods for imparting the knowledge/aptitudes that constitute our disciplines. Similarly, students must be given opportunities to consider how different contexts shape and reshape the methods and processes that define their learning; they too should be encouraged to develop a broad set of learning strategies that they can utilize in a variety of contexts.

References

Weimer, M. (2011). Making time for reflection. Faculty Focus. Retrieved from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/making-time-for-reflection/


Can Reciprocal Peer Tutoring Increase Metacognition in Your Students?

Aaron S. Richmond, Ph. D.

How many of you use collaborative learning in your classroom? If you do, do you specifically use it to increase metacognition in your students? If the answer is yes, you are likely building on the work of Hadwin, Jarvela, and Miller (2011) and Schraw, Crippen, and Hartley (2006). For those of you unfamiliar with collaborative learning, I tend to agree with Slavich and Zimbardo’s (2012) definition, in collaborative learning students “…tackle problems and question with peers—especially more knowledgeable peers—insofar as such experiences provide students with opportunities to learn new problem-solving strategies and to debate ideas in a way that challenges their understanding of concepts” (p. 572). There are many ways to use collaborative learning in the classroom, jigsaw classroom, paired annotations, send-a-problem, think-pair-share, three-step interview, peer tutoring, number heads, etc. Of particular interest, recent research on collaborative learning suggests that reciprocal peer tutoring may be particularly useful when your goal is to not only learn course material, but to increase your student’s metacognition (De Backer, Van Keer, Moerkerke, & Valcke, 2016).

In their innovative study, De Backer and colleagues (2016) investigated the effects of using reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT) to support and increase metacognitive regulation in higher education. De Backer and colleagues defined RPT as “the structured exchange of the tutor role among peers in groups/pairs…and enables each student to experience the specific benefits derived from providing and receiving academic guidance.” (p. 191) De Backer et al. had students, over a course of the semester, complete eight peer tutoring sessions. All students were trained to be a tutor,  experienced being a tutor, and tutored their peers at least twice. Tutoring sessions were 120 minutes in length and occurred outside of class. The tutor’s role was to manage the tutees and promote collaborative learning. During each tutoring session, the tutees were asked to solve a problem related to the class content. Each problem had three specific components:

(1) An outline of learning objectives to guide peers’ discussion to central course-related topics; (2) a subtask aimed at getting familiar with the theme-specific terminology; and (3) a subtask in which students were instructed to apply theoretical notions to realistic instructional cases. (De Backer et al., 2016, p. 193)

The problems presented, often did not have clear-cut answers and required considerable cognitive effort. De Backer et al. video recorded all the tutoring sessions and then scored each session on the amount and type of metacognitive regulation that occurred by both tutors and tutees. For example, they looked at the student’s ability to orient, plan, monitor, and evaluate. They also measured the level of processing (whether it was shallow or deep processing of metacognitive strategies). Appendix D of De Backer et al.’s article provided examples of how to code metacognitive data. See Table 1 for an example of the scoring (De Backer et al., 2016, p. 41). They then scored the frequency of metacognitive regulations that occurred per session.

Table 1. Examples of Lower and Deep Level Metacognitive Regulation in Reciprocal Peer Tutoring by De Backer et al. (2016, pp. 41-42)
Metacognition–Monitoring
Comprehension Monitoring Noting lack of comprehension T: “Does everyone understand the outlines of instructional behaviorism?”
t1: “I still don’t understand the concept of aptitude.”
Checking comprehension by repeating (LL) T: “Does everyone agree now that instructional behaviorism and instructional constructivism are opposites?”
t1: “I think (…) because in behaviorism the instructor decides on everything but constructivism is about learners being free to construct their own knowledge.:
t2: “Yes constructivist learners are much more independent and active, not so?”
Checking comprehension by elaborating (DL) T: “The behavioristic instructor permanently provides feedback. Who knows why?”
t1: “Is it not to make sure that learners don’t make mistakes?”
t2: “Could that also be the reason why they structure the learning materials extensively? And why they don’t like collaborative learning? Because collaborative learning requires

spontaneous discussions between students. You cannot really structure it in advance, not

so?”
Note. DL = Deep learning, LL = low or shallow learning, T = tutor, t1 and t2 = tutees.

De Backer and colleagues (2016) found that as the semester progressed, students engaged in more and more metacognitive regulatory processes. Specifically, their orientation increased, their monitoring increased and their evaluation increased (in general the frequency was 3 times greater at the end of the semester than at the beginning of the semester). However, planning stayed stagnant over the course of the semester. Specifically, the frequency of planning use continued to be low throughout the semester.  Far more interesting was that students (over the course of the semester) decreased their use of shallow or low-level metacognitive strategies and increased their use of deep-level metacognitive strategies as result. Increases in metacognitive regulation occurred across most types of metacognitive strategies (e.g., regulation, orientation, activating prior knowledge, task analysis, monitoring, and evaluation).

 As demonstrated by De Backer and colleagues study and the work of other researchers (e.g., King, 1997; De Backer, Van Keer, & Valcke, 2012), RPT and other collaborative learning instructional methods may be a useful in increasing metacognitive processes of students.

Concluding Thoughts and Questions for You

After reading De Backer et al. (2016), I was fascinated by the possible use of RPT in my own classroom. So, I started to think about how to implement it myself. Some questions arose that I thought you might help me with:

  1. How do I specifically scaffold the use of RPT in my classroom? More so, what does a successful RPT session resemble? Fortunately, De Backer and colleagues did provide an appendix to their study (Appendix C) that gives an example of what a tutoring session may look like.
  2. How many tutoring sessions is enough to increase the metacognition in my students? De Backer et al. had 8 sessions. This would be difficult for me to squeeze into my course planning. Would 3-4 be enough? What do you think? But then not all students could be a tutor. Do they get more (metacognitively) out of being a tutor vs. a tutee? This is something that De Backer and colleagues did not analyze. (Hint, hint all you folks—SoTL project in the making;)
  3. De Backer et al. briefly described that the tutors had a 10-page manual on how to be a tutor. Hmm…I don’t know if my students would be able to effectively learn from this. What other simple ways might we use to teach students how to be effective tutors in the context of RPT?
  4. Finally, are you do anything like De Backer et al.? And if so, do you think it is improving your student’s metacognitive regulation?

 References

De Backer, L., Van Keer, H., Moerkerke, B., & Valcke, M. (2016). Examining evolutions in the adoption of metacognitive regulation in reciprocal peer tutoring groups. Metacognition and Learning, 11, 187-213. doi:10.1007/s11409-015-9141-7

De Backer, L., Van Keer, H., & Valcke, M. (2012). Exploring the potential impact of reciprocal peer tutoring on higher education students’ metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation. Instructional Science, 40, 559–588.

Hadwin, A. F., Järvelä, S., & Miller, M. (2011). Self-regulated, co-regulated, and socially shared regulation of learning. In B. J. Zimmerman & D. H. Schunk (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance (pp. 65–84). New York: Routledge.

King, A. (1997). Ask to think-tell why©: A model to transactive peer tutoring for scaffolding higher level complex learning. Educational Psychologist, 32, 221–235.

Schraw, G., Crippen, K. J., & Hartley, K. (2006). Promoting self-regulation in science education: metacognition as part of a broader perspective on learning. Research in Science Education, 36, 111–139.

Slavich, G. M., & Zimbardo, P. G. (2012). Transformational teaching: Theoretical underpinnings, basic principles, and core methods. Educational Psychology Review, 24, 569-608. doi:10.1007/s10648-012-9199-6


Using Metacognition to select and apply appropriate teaching strategies

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

Metacognition was a recurring theme at the recent Speaking SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) conference at Highpoint university. Invited speaker Saundra McGuire, for one, argued that metacognition is the key to teaching students how to learn. Stacy Lipowski, for another, argued for the importance of metacognitive self-monitoring through the regular testing of students. We argued for the importance of metacognitive instruction (i.e. the use of reflective awareness and self-regulation to make intentional and timely adjustments to teaching a specific  individual or group of students) as a tool for selecting and implementing teaching strategies. This post will share a synopsis of our presentation from the conference.

We started with the assumption that many instructors would like to make use of evidence-based strategies to improve student learning, but they are often faced with the challenge of how to decide among the many available options. We suggested that metacognitive instruction provides a solution. Building blocks for metacognitive instruction include 1) consideration of student characteristics, context, and learning goals, 2) consideration of instructional strategies and how those align with the student characteristics, context, and learning goals, and 3) ongoing feedback, adjustment and refinement as the course progresses (Scharff & Draeger, 2015).

Suppose, for example, that you’re teaching a lower-level core course in your discipline with approximately 35 students where the course goals include the 1) acquisition of broad content and 2) application of this content to new contexts (e.g., current events, personal situations, other course content areas). Students enrolled in the course typically have a variety of backgrounds and ability levels. Moreover, they don’t always see the relevance of the course and they are not always motivated to complete assignments. As many of us know, these core courses are both a staple of undergraduate education and a challenge to teach.

Scholarly teachers (Richlin, 2001) consult the literature to find tools for addressing the challenges just described. Because of the recent growth of SoTL work, they will find many instructional choices to choose from. Let’s consider four choices. First, Just-in-Time teaching strategies ask students to engage course material prior to class and relay those responses to their instructor (e.g., select problem sets or focused writing). Instructors then use student responses to tailor the lesson for the day (Novak, Patterson, & Gavrin, 1999; Simkins & Maier, 2004; Scharff, Rolf, Novotny, & Lee, 2013). In courses where Just-in-Time teaching strategies are used, students are more likely to read before class and take ownership over their own learning. Second, Team-Based Learning (TBL) strategies also engage students in some pre-class preparation, and then during class, students engage in active learning through a specific sequence of individual work, group work, and immediate feedback to close the learning loop (Michaelsen & Sweet, 2011). TBL has been shown to shift course goals from knowing to applying and create a more balanced responsibility for learning between faculty and students (with students taking on more responsibility). Third, concept maps provide visual representations of important connections (often hierarchical connections) between important concepts. They can help students visualize connections between important course concepts (Davies, 2010), but they require some prior understanding of the concepts being mapped. Fourth, mind mapping also leads to visual representations of related concepts, but the process is more free-form and creative, and often requires less prior knowledge. It encourages exploration of relationships and is more similar to brainstorming.

Any of these three tools might be good instructional choices for the course described above. But how is an instructor supposed to choose?

Drawing inspiration from Tanner (2012) who shared questions to prompt metacognitive learning strategies for students, we recommend that instructors ask themselves a series of questions aligned with each of our proposed building blocks to prompt their own metacognitive awareness and self-regulation (Scharff & Draeger, 2015). For example, instructors should consider the type of learning (both content and skills) they hope their students will achieve for a given course, as well as their own level of level of preparedness and time / resources available for incorporating that particular type of teaching strategy.

In the course described above, any of the four instructional strategies might help with the broad acquisition of content, and depending upon how they are implemented, some of them might promote student application of the material to new contexts. For example, while concept maps can facilitate meaningful learning their often hierarchical structure may not allow for the flexibility associated with making connections to personal context and current events. In contrast, the flexibility of mind-mapping might serve well to promote generation of examples for application, but it would be less ideal to support content acquisition. Team-Based-Learning can promote active learning and facilitate the application of knowledge to personal contexts and current events, but it requires the instructor to have high familiarity with the course and the ability to be very flexible during class as students are given greater responsibility (which may be problematic with lower-level students who are not motivated to be in the course).   Just-in-Time-Teaching can promote both content acquisition and application if both are addressed in the pre-class questions. During class, the instructor should show some flexibility by tailoring the lesson to best reach students based on their responses to the pre-class questions, but overall, the lesson is much more traditional in its organization and expectations for student engagement than with TBL. Under these circumstances, it might be that Just-in-Time strategies offer the best prospect for teaching broad content to students with varying backgrounds and ability levels.

While the mindful choice of instructional strategies is important, we believe that instructors should also remain mindful in-the-moment as they implement strategies. Questions they might ask themselves include:

  • What are you doing to “check in” with your learners to ensure progress towards daily and weekly course objectives?
  • What are signs of success (or not) of the use of the strategy?
  • How can you  adjust the technique to better meet your student needs?
  • Are your students motivated and confident, or are they bored or overwhelmed and frustrated? Are your students being given enough time to practice new skills?
  • If learning is not where it needs to be or student affect is not supportive of learning, what are alternate strategies?
  • Are you prepared to shift to them? If not, then why not?

These prompts can help instructors adjust and refine their implementation of the chosen instructional strategy in a timely manner.

If, for example, Just-in-Time assignments reveal that students are understanding core concepts but having difficulty applying them, then the instructor could tweak Just-in-time assignments by more explicitly requiring application examples. These could then be discussed in class. Alternatively, the instructor might keep the Just-in-Time questions focused on content, but start to use mind mapping during class in order to promote a variety of examples of application.  In either case, it is essential that instructors are explicitly and intentionally considering whether the instructor choice is working as part of an ongoing cycle of awareness and self-regulation. Moreover, we believe that as instructors cultivate their ability to engage in metacognitive instruction, they will be better prepared to make in-the-moment adjustments during their lessons because they will be more “tuned-in” to the needs of individual learners and they will be more aware of available teaching strategies.

While not a magic bullet, we believe that metacognitive instruction can help instructors decide which instructional strategy best fits a particular pedagogical situation and it can help instructors adjust and refine those techniques as the need arises.

References

Davies, M. (2011). Concept mapping, mind mapping and argument mapping: what are the differences and do they matter? Higher education, 62(3), 279-301.

Michaelsen, L. K., & Sweet, M. (2011). Team‐based learning. New directions for teaching and learning,(128), 41-51.

Novak, G., Patterson, E., Gavrin, A., & Christian, W. (1999). Just-in-time teaching:

Blending active learning with web technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Richlin, L. (2001). Scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching. New directions for teaching and learning, 2001(86), 57-68.

Scharff, L. and Draeger, J. (2015). “Thinking about metacognitive instruction” National Teaching and Learning Forum 24 (5), 4-6.

Scharff, L., Rolf, J. Novotny, S. and Lee, R. (2011). “Factors impacting completion of pre-class assignments (JiTT) in Physics, Math, and Behavioral Sciences.” In C. Rust (ed.), Improving Student Learning: Improving Student Learning Global Theories and Local Practices: Institutional, Disciplinary and Cultural Variations. Oxford Brookes University, UK.

Simkins, S. & Maier, M. (2009). Just-in-time teaching: Across the disciplines, across the

academy. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Tanner, K. D. (2012). Promoting student metacognition. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 11(2), 113-120.