By John Draeger, SUNY Buffalo State
As the new semester gets underway, I am mindful of the importance of helping students learn critical thinking and metacognition alongside important content. I teach courses in philosophical ethics. My goal is to help students learn to reflect on basic questions of life by critically examining fundamental values. I want students to learn to uncover the underlying substructure of moral issues (Draeger 2014). I want them to see the real-life relevance of fundamental values (e.g., respect, fairness, and individual well-being) and how reflecting on those values inform how they interact with those around them.
We began this semester with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” because the essay underscores the real-world relevance of philosophy. We move from discussions of King to conversations about #BlackLivesMatter, redlining, and concerns about the criminal justice system. Students are eager to talk about these issues. The trick, however, is to help them learn to think about them in more philosophically nuanced ways. It is tempting to fall into familiar patterns of thinking without taking a hard look at the nature of those thoughts. It is also easy to appeal to authority. King was on the “right” side of history. There is national holiday in the United States dedicated to his memory and a monument on the national mall. But, more deeply, why is racial segregation unjust? Why think we have a moral duty to overturn it? What are the implications of King’s analysis to contemporary debates?
In an attempt to help students learn how to uncover additional layers of philosophical insight, I offer what I call the “philosophical method.” It is a recursive process where students identify the core values, ask critical questions (e.g., about meaning, assumptions), apply to concrete cases, formulate insights gleaned from those applications, and use them to refine their analysis.
At the start of each class, we identity the relevant values under discussion and how they are related to class readings. As we move through a class session, we take frequent “thinking-about-thinking breaks” to put a pause on the discussion to isolate elements of the process. This pause is sometimes even indicated by making a corny “T” gesture with my hands. The idea is that we want to be explicit about the thinking process (i.e. engage in metacognition) in order to understand how the various parts are related and how to engage in deeper reflections about values (critical thinking).
For example, King argues that segregation is unjust because it degrades human dignity, because it harms the human spirit, because policies were arbitrarily applied, and because not all people had a voice in policy creation. It is all too easy to look at this collection of arguments and say “yup, segregation is bad.” However, each of reason points to a different fundamental value. Degrading dignity is related to a duty to respect all people. Harming individuals is related to the importance of personal well-being. Concerns about arbitrary policy application is a worry about fairness. And concerns about voice in a process points to the value of democracy. These values are interrelated, but identifying their separateness is an important step towards exploring their interconnections. And this is precisely what reflecting carefully about basic value questions is all about.
In a previous post, I explored differences between two forms of thinking about thinking, namely critical thinking and metacognition (Draeger 2015). I’ve argued that “critical thinking involves an awareness of mode of thinking within a domain (e.g., question assumptions about gender, determine the appropriateness of a statistical method), while metacognition involves an awareness of the efficacy of particular strategies for completing that task.” The philosophical method that I just described is an example critical thinking within a discipline. However, when I explicitly bring student awareness to their engagement in the critical thinking process we move to a more metacognitive domain. I would argue that these think-about-thinking breaks can be one way of practicing both skills.
Thinking-about-thinking breaks focus on whether our strategies for disciplinary thinking are working. Being metacognitive about our critical thinking processes, for example, can help us see where misunderstandings arise and when we might need to pivot to a new way of approaching the interrelationships between important values. If students have trouble understanding the difference between respect, fairness, and well-being, then metacognitive awareness can suggest a shift in critical thinking strategy (e.g., application to dissimilar case, consider underlying assumptions, explore evidence of their importance, clarify meaning).
Because metacognition is a skill, thinking-about-thinking breaks give students an opportunity to practice in class with both instructor and peer support. These breaks are part of a broad effort on my part to promote metacognitive development alongside content and disciplinary thinking. I encourage metacognitive reading strategies (Draeger 2017) and use Just-in-Time teaching strategies to both encourage metacognition outside of class and inform discussion within class (Draeger 2016). Taking class time to practice metacognitive strategies underscores its importance in the intellectual life of my students. I hope that making the connection between metacognition and critically thinking about fundamental values (e.g., respect, fairness, well-being) will underscore the ways that metacognition is essential to a deeper understanding of the basic questions of life.
References
Draeger, J. (posted July 11, 2014). Using metacognition to uncover the substructure of moral issues.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com.
Draeger, J. (posted October 12, 2015). “Two forms of ‘thinking about thinking’: Metacognition and critical thinking.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com.
Draeger, J. (posted November 17, 2016) “Promoting metacognitive reading through Just-in-Time Teaching.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/promoting-metacognitive-reading-just-time-teaching/
Draeger, J. (posted June 16, 2017). “Metacognitive Reading Boosts Philosophy Exam Scores.” Retrieved from https://www.improvewithmetacognition.com/developing_student_metacognition_draeger/