{"id":13526,"date":"2013-03-11t09:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-03-11t14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=13526"},"modified":"2021-08-18t14:50:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18t19:50:28","slug":"making-student-thinking-visible-the-impact-of-metacognitive-practice-in-the-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2013\/03\/making-student-thinking-visible-the-impact-of-metacognitive-practice-in-the-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"making student thinking visible: metacognitive practices in the classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

by nancy chick (cft assistant director) and katie headrick taylor (cft graduate teaching fellow)<\/em><\/p>\n

every friday, the four cft graduate teaching fellows<\/a> and assistant director nancy chick<\/a> meet to discuss the week\u2019s activities and then explore something substantive, either through readings or guests.\u00a0 we recently discussed the \u201ctop 12 teaching and learning articles of 2012<\/a>\u201d published by faculty focus<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>a website and e-newsletter that regularly publishes articles on teaching and learning.<\/p>\n

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the topics of these 12 articles are so varied that nancy thought it would open up plenty\u00a0of possibilities for discussion and future exploration, as well as inform the day-to-day consulting work we do at the cft. <\/span>however, katie started the discussion by pointing out that a theme bound these varied articles together, metacognition\u2014or thinking about one\u2019s own thinking.<\/strong> thanks to the wealth of research by cognitive psychologists, education researchers, and scholarship of teaching and learning (sotl) researchers, we know that making student thinking visible to them is one of the best approaches we can implement in the classroom<\/strong> (bransford, brown, & cocking, 2000, tanner, 2012; resnick, 1987; collins & ferguson, 1993).<\/span><\/p>\n

katie found that many of the \u201ctop 12\u201d articles identified strategies for making student thinking visible not to just instructors, but also to their own learning processes. by intentionally uncovering how<\/em> learners were thinking about discipline-specific concepts, students and instructors were able to discuss the ways in which this thinking was similar or different to the thinking of disciplinary experts.\u00a0 contemplating the epistemological question of \u201chow do we know what we know?\u201d <\/strong>brought novice thinking into contact with more sophisticated, expert ways of thinking within the discipline. working at this metacognitive interface (where expert and novice thinking come together) modeled for students disciplinary habits of mind, or how<\/em> students should be thinking and learning about the content. as barbara y. white and john r. frederiksen (1998) state,<\/p>\n

\u201ccreating curricula that help students to develop an awareness of their inquiry process and an ability to reflect on it could enable students to improve their learning expertise while also acquiring subject matter expertise\u201d (p. 4).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

nancy was impressed: not only did this thematic connection of metacognition show some insightful reading; it also suggested good news for teaching and learning.\u00a0 the \u201ctop 12 articles\u201d were selected not for their quality but for their popularity, \u201cbased on a combination of the number of reader comments and social shares, e-newsletter open and click-thru rates, web traffic and other reader engagement metrics.\u201d if these articles were widely read, and the principles of metacognition run through many of them, then readers were not only learning about strategies for discussion, learner-centered teaching, teaching academic integrity, and the like: they also got a stealth education on metacognition.<\/p>\n

in \u201cusing \u2018frameworks\u2019 to enhance teaching and learning<\/a>,\u201d patrice w. hallock explains how she uses three shapes as \u201ca writing space to record\u00a0what <\/em>students are thinking about course content as well as\u00a0how <\/em>they are thinking about it.\u201d\u00a0 it\u2019s a simple strategy. students note \u201csomething that \u2018squares\u2019 with my beliefs\u201d in the shape of a square, \u201c3 points to remember\u201d in a triangle, and \u201ca question circling in my mind\u201d in a circle after they\u2019ve read a course text.\u00a0 while these prompts may not apply across disciplines, the strategy is elegantly simple: develop a few easy-to-remember metacognitive prompts to develop a habit in the students\u2019 post-reading moments. <\/strong> hallock offers a few more examples created by her own students, who used metaphors instead of basic shapes.\u00a0 one used archery<\/a> with prompts about \u201c\u2019bullseye\u2019 beliefs\u201d or ideas,\u201d \u201cmaterial that missed the mark,\u201d \u201coverarching concepts,\u201d and concepts that \u201cstill need sharpening.\u201d\u00a0 another drew a camera<\/a> with prompts for \u201cconcepts to focus on,\u201d \u201cideas that need further development,\u201d and so on.\u00a0 as her original strategy is memorable in its language of the three shapes, these student-generated examples are memorable in their metaphors\u2014and this ease of memory facilitates the habit-formation of such questions about what the student learned (or didn\u2019t) from the reading.<\/p>\n

in her article, \u201cfive characteristics of learner-centered teaching,<\/a>\u201d maryellen weimer suggests that teachers have to teach students much more than the content or the big ideas of the discipline. teachers have to<\/p>\n

\u201cteach students how to think, solve problems, evaluate evidence, analyze arguments, generate hypotheses \u2013 all those learning skills essential to mastering material in the discipline.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

but while instructors should make a concerted effort to model<\/em> appropriate ways of thinking, they should also give students space to grapple with and reflect on the material on their own. a part of this thinking space should include a reflection on their learning process, \u201clike how they study for exams, when they do assigned readings, whether they revise their writing or check their answers.\u201d <\/strong>having time and space to analyze their thinking process allows students to develop a deeper awareness of their own learning strengths and weaknesses and be able to compare these qualities to the great thinkers they may want to emulate.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>weimer\u2019s article \u201cdeep learning vs. surface learning: getting students to understand the difference<\/a>\u201d spotlights a project in which the instructor identified for students \u201cdeep\u201d or \u201ccognitively active learning behaviors\u201d and surface or \u201ccognitively passive learning behaviors\u201d and then had students monitor and report their study strategies throughout the semester. students who participated in this monitoring-reporting activity had higher exam scores than those who didn\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

barbi honeycutt\u2019s \u201ca syllabus tip: embed big questions<\/a>\u201d simply advises us to consider our course learning outcomes, develop questions based on those outcomes, and put them throughout our syllabus to \u201cstimulate discussion, create curiosity, and assess students\u2019 knowledge.\u201d \u00a0such larger questions can also be seen as metacognitive, encouraging students to think above and beyond basic course content to how it connects to broader issues and disciplinary goals. being explicit about the purpose of these questions helps students recognize that they\u2019re practicing expert thinking.<\/strong><\/p>\n

as you read the remaining articles<\/a>, consider how they promote metacognition.<\/p>\n

for more information on metacognition, including more specific ways to implement it across the disciplines, read cft assistant director cynthia brame<\/a>‘s blog post “thinking about metacognition<\/a>,” and stay tuned for the cft\u2019s \u201cmetacognition\u201d teaching guide<\/a> written by nancy chick, coming soon.<\/p>\n

references<\/strong><\/p>\n