METACOGNITION: FOOD FOR THOUGHT!
Strategies to Teach Metacognition and How to Assess Metacognition
“I am a night owl, I study better at night!”
“I love doing math with my favourite music on my headphones”
“I read and read and read until I can no longer forget it”
“I love scribbling while listening to the lecture”
Ever heard these statements? What do these statements reflect about your learners? What do these statements reflect on the strategies used by the learners? How do your learners know about their strategies?
Welcome to the world of Metacognition!
Wait… Meta… what???
What is Metacognition?
“[It] refers to the ability to reflect upon, understand and control one’s learning,” (Schraw and Dennison, p. 460)
Meta: About Cognition: Thinking
In simple words, metacognition is “thinking about one’s thinking”. It reflects a student’s self-awareness, their purposeful thinking about their thinking strategies, that helps them achieve higher results by making greater sense of their life experiences/ learning experiences.
“Metacognition is the regulatory system people use to understand and control own cognitive (brain) performance. It involves people being very aware of how they learn, what strategies meet their needs, evaluating the effectiveness of strategies and then implementing the best plan of action to optimally learn.” (CIEL/Vancouver Island University, Knaack and Robertson)
Students who have mastered metacognition skills:
· are able to identify their memory limits and obtain help where required,
· are able to identify their strengths and weaknesses and work towards self-improvements,
· can effectively ascertain their learning graph through frequent self-assessments,
· are capable of self-monitoring and using a variety of learning strategies,
· are more competent and confident of their skills because of repeated practice, and
· are proficient planners at many levels of their learning.
There is a need to teach for metacognitive knowledge explicitly….we are continually surprised at the number of students who come to [university] having very little metacognitive knowledge; knowledge about different strategies, different cognitive tasks, and particularly accurate knowledge about themselves. (Pintrich, 2002)
METACOIGNITION TEACHING STRATEGIES
There are various strategies to teach metacognition and nurture self-awareness in students, right from a young age. Researches show us that not only self-awareness evolves during childhood, but also that its development is related to metacognitive processes of the brain.
We, as teachers, know that if the students reflect on how they learn, they can become better learners.
Metacognition involves two key elements/ process on how to learn:
1. Knowledge of Cognition (Declarative, Procedural, and Conditional)
a. Awareness of factors that influence your own learning
b. Knowing a collection of strategies to use for learning
c. Choosing the appropriate strategy for the specific learning situation
2. Regulation of Cognition
a. Setting goals and planning
b. Monitoring and controlling learning
c. Evaluating own regulation (assessing if the strategy you are using is working or not, making adjustments and trying something new)
(CIEL/ Vancouver Island University, Knaack and Robertson)
Some examples of metacognition in action:
· identifying one’s own learning style and needs
· planning for a task
· gathering and organizing materials
· arranging a study space and schedule
· monitoring mistakes
· evaluating task success
· evaluating the success of any learning strategy and adjusting
(Mike Neer, 2016)
Teaching metacognition strategies is divided in 4 broad categories:
· Learning Style Assessments: Knowing how a student learns
· Modeling
· Meta-discussions
· Guidance in Self- Questioning
Some Strategies:
Ø Teaching students about how brains are wired for growth: Growth mindset vs Fixed mindset
Ø Giving opportunity to the students to express their doubts and questions: safe environment
Ø Reflection exercises: The KWL charts and other graphic organizers to reflect upon their previous knowledge and post learning knowledge/ understanding
Ø Learning Journals: Self-monitoring- focus on how and why’s of their learnings — can be done weekly through series of questions
Ø Wrapper activities: self-monitoring tool that surrounds the existing task and integrates metacognition skills
Ø Reflective/ Retrospective Writing: Writing an essay vs MCQs for higher order thinking
ASSESSING METACOGNITION
Most of the strategies listed above are measures of assessing a student’s metacognition skills.
· KWL charts, Questionnaires, Wrappers, Reflections and even observations are used to identify and assess students’ metacognition skills. Metacognition is a complex set of skills that are embedded within the teaching- learning process. It is often difficult than not to assess this complex skill set in students.
· The ability of a learner to detect errors in their comprehension is an assessment marker too (Error Detection Paradigm- Baker & Cerro, 2000). The students are given texts with problems/ errors and their metacognition skills are assessed through their attention to the embedded errors.
· A comprehensive checklist/ questionnaire can be used along with the score card to assess student metacognition.
· Self- Report Judgements: The students are encouraged to judge the difficulty level of a task before, during and after the task/ lesson.
· Thinking aloud- Who knew this simple exercise could be such an important factor in developing their metacognition skills! Thinking aloud, simply put as verbally expressing your thoughts, is one way to assess what students think about their learning strategies.
· Memory Games- Aren’t these fun? From memory cards to bingo games, all reflect the metacognition skills of the students and can tell a lot about the students’ thinking process.
All the above assessment techniques are valuable tools but come with certain limitations. Nonetheless, my two cents: building metacognition skills is a vital process in the learning journey of a student; hence, assessments or not, focus should be paid more on strategies to teach metacognition skills to our students.
Do you have a strategy that you use to nurture metacognition skills in your students?
What games/ activities do you use with the elementary students to build these skills?
Do post your answers to the above questions, in addition to your comments and suggestions in the reply box to help fellow teachers empower their students and prepare them for life.
REFERENCES:
Assessing and Developing Metacognitive skills By Maryellen Weimer (2011), Retrieved from: https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/assessing-and-developing-metacognitive-skills/
CIEL, Vancouver Island University, Ten Metacognition Strategies by Liesel Knaack and Melissa Robertson, Retrieved from: https://ciel.viu.ca/teaching-learning-pedagogy/designing-your-course/how-learning-works/ten-metacognitive-teaching-strategies#
Promoting Student Metacognition by Kimberley D. Tanner (2017), Retrieved from: https://www.lifescied.org/doi/full/10.1187/cbe.12-03-0033
Centre for Teaching, Metacognition by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director, Retrieved from: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/
How To Learn Better- Part 5: Metacognitive by Mike Neer (2016), Retrieved from: https://dataworks-ed.com/blog/2016/03/how-to-learn-better-part-5-metacognitive/
Metacognition: Nurturing Self- Awareness in the Classroom by Marylin Price-Mitchell, Retrieved from: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/8-pathways-metacognition-in-classroom-marilyn-price-mitchell
Metacognition in the Primary Classroom by John Wolf (2017), Retrieved from: https://www.indstate.edu/education/sites/education.indstate.edu/files/Metacognition%20in%20the%20Primary%20Classroom.pdf
Assessing Metacognition: Theory and Practices. International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education, by Nesrin Ozturk, Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315373394_Assessing_Metacognition_Theory_and_Practices
