Metacognition

1. Metacognition Neil H. Schwartz Psych 605

2. Three Terms: Organizing the Concept Piaget Spence Flavell Bandura Endogenous Constructivism Exogenous Constructivism Metacognition Self-Regulation Self-regulated Learning Dialectical Constructivism

3. Conceptual Anchoring • Endogenous Constructivism • Reflective abstraction of new or existing cognitive structures. • Inside the head • Emphasizes learner development instead of learner-environment interactions • Exogenous Constructivism • Interaction of the person with their environment. • Outside the head • Emphasizes reciprocal determinism of the environment on the person– mediated through behavior. • Involves evaluations of performance, personal standards, valuations of activities, and attributions. • Dialectical Constructivsm • Combines Endogenous and Exogenous constructivism • Inside and outside the head. • Both Endo and Exo features exist in a relation of reciprocal constraint and facilitation. • Endo and Exo are NOT mutually exclusive.

4. Inside the Head Metacognition Flavell Monitoring Control Self-regulatory Mechanisms or Metacognitive Control Processes Knowledge of Cognition Metacognition Others Checking the Outcome Planning Monitoring Effectiveness Testing Revising Evaluating Strategies Cognitive monitoring Awareness of Comprehension Monitoring of task performance during the process of performing

5. Self Regulated Learning: Winne & Hadwin • Learning occurs in 4 phases • Defining tasks • Setting goals and making plans • Using tactics to study • Making adaptations to metacognition • Each phase is completed in terms of: • Conditions • Operations • Products • Evaluations • Standards C O P E S

6. Conditions: Of the Task Conditions: of the Learner • Beliefs and dispositions • Factors of motivation • Knowledge of the domain • Knowledge of the task • Knowledge of tactics and strategies • Resources • Instructional cues • Time • Social Context

7. Operations Standards • Criteria that a student believes is the end state of a learning phase. • Allows the student to know when a learning phase is over or complete. • The actual processes used to manipulate information. • They include searching, monitoring, assembling, rehearsing, translating, etc. • They are not metacognitive, but rather cognitive. • They result in cognitive products; that is, information for a particular stage.

8. Products Evaluations • These are cognitive evaluations of the fit between the standards and the products. • Evaluations are metacognitive and iterative • They manifest differently in each phase. • What a student produces from the recursive interaction of Standards, Operations, & Evaluations • Different products are produced in each of the four phases. • Products are the things that a student takes with him from the task– e. g. understanding Winne’s model..

9. Conscious vs. Automatic Processes Metacognition and Cognition • Metacognition is a higher order agent overlooking and governing cognition • Metacognition draws on cognition • Metacognitive knowledge is based on domain-specific knowledge. • Metacognition is typically private and unavailable to an observer. • Most metacognitive processes are automatic. • They become conscious when an error occurs • When they are first learned or deployed they are intentional and typically conscious.

10. Devlopmental Processes Domain General vs. Specific • The jury is still out on whether metacognitive skills are domain general or specific. • Metacognition is related to theory of mind and intelligence. • But, intelligence and metacognition are not the same thing. • Metacognition develops first in separate domains and later becomes generalized across domains.