Teaching with Metacognition

1. Teaching with Metacognition Nancy Allen, Ph.D. College of Education Qatar University nancya@qu.edu.qa Image from: http://thecopperchalice.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html

2. Session Objectives • Identify key elements of metacognition. • Give a summary of the research related to metacognition. • Describe how an instructor can use metacognition in his/her own course preparation and teaching. • Explain how instructors can encourage students to be self-regulated learners. • Modify current lessons/assignments to incorporate metacognition.

3. What is metacognition? • Usually defined as “Thinking about thinking.” • Preferred term: Strategic Thinking Image sources: http://gayathrikaushik.blogspot.com/2009/01/2-followers-already-hmmmm.html

4. Definitions • Metacognition - literally means “beyond knowing” • “an appreciation of what one already knows, together with a correct apprehension of the learning task and what knowledge and skills it requires, combined with the agility to make correct inferences about how to apply one’s strategic knowledge to a particular situation, and to do so efficiently and reliably” (Taylor, 1999). • Self-regulation – assessing one’s own comprehension and monitoring the thinking process

5. Metacognition • Most closely associated with a teacher’s instructional practices. • The teacher’s metacognitive practices, if done effectively, can lead to student self-regulation.

6. What does the research say? • A “metacognitive” approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them. • How People Learn: Mind, Experience, and School (Bradsford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). Image from: http://bee-pollen-energy.com/bee-pollen-research/

7. What does the research say? • The goal of education, then, is to promote people who can think for themselves and actively direct their own learning – but students must be taught to do that • We must deliberately cause students to think about thinking, to deliberately develop thinking skills. • Education in the past has served largely to IDENTIFY good thinkers. We must strive, instead, to teach all students how to be good thinkers. (Bradsford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000)

8. What does the research say? For at least two decades, researches have consistently shown that metacognition, or the awareness and regulation of the process of one’s thinking , is critical ingredient to successful learning. (Lin, Schwartz, & Hatano, 2005; Freebern, & Meter,1998; Pressley, Etten, Yokoi, Freebern, & Meter, 1998; Hacker, Dunlosky, & Graesser, 1998; Flavell, 1987; Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983)

9. What does the research say? • In the past, the focus was on deliberately teaching students metacognitive strategies. • More recently, there has been an increase in the use of modeling and prompting(Lin, Swartz, & Hatano, 2005).

10. Metacognition Process Image from: http://bee-pollen-energy.com/bee-pollen-research/

11. What we need to know… • Kinds of knowledge: • Declarative • Procedural • Conditional Facts How When

12. Activity 1 • We are going to build a bridge to Bahrain. What… • …knowledge do we need? • …kinds of processes will we need to be able to do? • Which of these do we already have? • Which will we need to acquire? • How will we acquire them?

13. Now you do it! • Select an objective for your course. • Identify the assignment you will use to teach/assess this objective. • Identify the declarative and procedural knowledge necessary to complete the task. • Evaluate which knowledge/skills students already have and identify how they may acquire the other ones. • Discuss your work in small groups. Select one of the examples and someone to present for your group. “Assign” it to the rest of us, modeling metacognition.

14. Problems with the Process: Encoding • Encoding refers to putting knowledge into long term memory.

15. Problems with the Process: Encoding How can we avoid problems with encoding? • Define relationships when teaching a concept. • Use concept mapping and other graphic organizers. • “Think aloud” when modeling skills. • Provide opportunities for sharing understanding among students. Let them talk. • Pre-test before testing. • Ask for writing or drawing explanations,

16. Problems with the Process: Encoding Activity 2: Think-Pair-Share Describe what encoding means and how it can result in student under achievement. Image from: http://doodle.riverspringscharter.org/joomla/index.php/home/think-pair-share

17. Problems with the Process: Clarifying • Missing important data or not separating relevant from irrelevant data. (Example: basing an interpretation of a poem on just the first stanza) • What strategies might be helpful to correct problems with encoding? • Model • Practice • Require outlines or drafts

18. Problems with the Process: Clarifying • Example: • Compare and contrast the histories of Pakistan and Indian during the first half of the 20th century. • Suppose a water tank in the shape of a right circular cylinder is thirty feet long and eight feet in diameter. How much sheet metal was used in its construction? • Draw a model of photosynthesis, label each part, and explain the steps.

19. Problems with the Process: Clarifying • Missing important data or not separating relevant from irrelevant data. (Example: basing an interpretation of a poem on just the first stanza) • What strategies might be helpful to correct problems with encoding? • Modeling • Practice

20. Errors in Operations • Failing to select the right sub-skills to apply. (Example, when proofreading, reading just to see if it sounds right, rather than making separate passes that check for fragments, subject-verb mis-agreement, and other errors they have learned from experience they are likely to make. SPECIFICALLY TEACH “reading for meaning” skills: • predicting • scanning • Using context clues * summarizing • KWL • note-sharing

21. Errors in Operations • Failing to divide a task into subparts. (Example, jumping right to the final calculation in a math or physics problem) • Model • Practice • Think-aloud What steps will we need to follow? How would we break this into parts? What should I do first? Then what?

22. Errors in Goal Seeking • Misrepresenting the task. (Example: Thinking they understand the task without reading or listening carefully.) • Have them repeat the task in pairs. (Think-Pair-Share) • Have them summarize. • Have the list knowledge, procedures, etc. (Activity 1)

23. Errors in Cognitive Load • Too many skills involved. • Help the student separate the skills. • Give the student the self-confidence s/he needs to be successful.

24. How to Teach Strategies • Give the strategy a name. • Describe its importance. • Tell when it should be used and when it would not be helpful. Give examples. • Explain why the strategy would in helping in that situation. • Practice with students and give them independent practice.

25. What the research says… • Explicitly teaching study strategies in content courses improves learning. (Commander & Valeri-Gold, 2001; Ramp & Guffey, 1999; Chiang, 1998; El-Hindi, 1997; McKeachie, 1988). • Few instructors explicitly teach study strategies; they seem to assume that students have already learned them in high school—but they haven’t. (McKeachie, 1988). • Rote memorization is the usual learning strategy—and often the only strategy—employed by high school students when they go to college (Nist, 1993).

26. More Activities • Think Aloud • Note Taking • Concept Mapping

27. Remember… Strategic, successful thinking

28. References • TaBradsford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (2000). How people learn: Mind, experience, and school. The National Academies Press. Available from the Internet at www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368 • Brown, A. L., Bransford, J. D., Ferrara, R. A., & Campione, J. C. (1983).Learning, remembering, and understanding. In J. H. Flavell & E.M.Markman (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol.3. Cognitive development (4th ed., pp. 77–166). New York: Wiley. • Chiang, L. H. (1998). Enhancing metacognitive skills through learning contracts. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Mid-Western Educational Research Association, Chicago. (ERIC Document Reproduction Services No. ED425 154). • Commander, N. E., & Valeri-Gold, M. (2001). The learning portfolio: A valuable tool for increasing metacognitive awareness. The Learning Assistance Review 6(2), 5-18. • El-Hindi, A. E. (1997). Connecting reading and writing: College learners’ metacognitive awareness. Journal of Developmental Education, 21(2), 10-17. • Flavell, J. H. (1987). Speculations about the nature and development of metacognition. In Weinert, F. E., & Kluwe, R. H. (Eds.), \ Metacognition, motivation, and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. • Hacker, D. J., Dunlosky, J., & Graesser, A. C. (1998). Metacognition in educational theory and practice. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. • Lin, X; Schwartz, D. & Hatano, G. (2005). Toward teachers’ adaptive metacognition. Educational Psychologist, 40(4), 245-255. • McKeachie, W. J. (1988). The need for study strategy training. In C. E. Weinstein, E. T. Goetz, & P. A. Alexander (Eds.), Learning and study strategies: Issues in assessment, instruction, and evaluation (pp. 3-9). New York: Academic Press. • Nist, S. (1993). What the literature says about academic literacy. Georgia Journal of Reading, (Fall-Winter), 11-18. • Peirce, W. (2003). Metacognition: Study strategies, monitoring, and motivation. Available from the Internet at http://academic.pgcc.edu/~wpeirce/MCCCTR/metacognition.htm • Pressley,M., Etten, S. V., Yokoi, L., Freebern, G.,&Meter, P. V. (1998). The metacognition of college studentship: A grounded theory approach. In H. Dunlosky& A. Graesser (Eds.), Metacognition in educational theory and practice (pp. 347–367). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. • Ramp, L. C. & Guffey, J. S. (1999). The impact of metacognitive training on academic self-efficacy of selected underachieving college students. (ERIC Document Reproduction Services No. ED432 607). • Taylor, S. (1999). Better learning through better thinking: Developing students’ metacognitive abilities. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 30(1), 34ff. Retrieved November 9, 2002, from Expanded Academic Index ASAP.