Metacognition – It’s Value and Meaning in Learning

Metacognition fascinates me because it speaks to what is absolutely lacking right now among even graduate-level students that I have coached and advised. The experience of managing campus and virtual tutoring programs has provided great insight into the learning challenges that they face. Many of these students are naturally bright and have made it through stellar SAT, ACT, and GRE, all the way to graduate education with very little thought to how their own purposeful effort or lack thereof, may have contributed to their success up to this point. They went through high school and then undergraduate studies with flying colors, and accolades. Now that they are embarking on their studies in graduate or advanced graduate coursework, many of them for the first time in their academic lives are failing quizzes and exams utilizing the same approach they always have.

One example is a hybrid program where the first challenge many such students face is managing online delivered content which they must assimilate on their own. After not spending any or enough time independently with online lecture content, they then go to the physical class expecting the course instructor to review and reteach what they were supposed to have learned independently, but they find that this is not the case. The instructor is now hosting a discussion on applying the concepts they were to have reviewed on their own. The students now find themselves lost and unable to participate and enrich their learning.

It’s amazing how things and times change and how the world order has had to change to keep up with the pace of technology. Learning has been no exception. When Millennials (Born 1981-1996, 22-37 years old) were in high school, taking and passing an online course was not a requirement for graduation. It is now a requirement. My son born in 2002 took and passed his online course on his second attempt. He didn’t do well on the first try because he did not apply himself to his learning in a focused and disciplined manner.

This takes me right back to the important place that metacognition now has in learning online. By teaching students to "drive their own brain" through metacognition, we give them a solid guide for thinking about how they can best learn, that is, applying themselves in a focused and disciplined manner. One advantage for instructors and instructional designers, as well as students, is that metacognition can be learned when it is explicitly taught and practiced across content and social contexts. Being metacognitive can be likened to being more conscious, reflective, and aware of one's progress along the learning path (Wilson, 2014)

Educational research about metacognition and its power for increasing student learning and achievement has only recently begun to identify that the physical center of metacognition in the brain is in the anterior (front) prefrontal cortex. Research shows that subjects with better metacognition had more gray matter in this part of the brain.

Teaching students to be more metacognitively aware requires approaches that include

1. Teaching students about this vital skill by explaining the term metacognition and its meaning.

2. Allowing students to think about, and identify the ways in which they drive their own brains, so they know what works for them and what doesn’t.

3. The author of this article (Wilson , 2014), also states that another strategy is to allow students to choose topics that are of interest to them and that they want to learn more about.

It is on this third point that I would beg to differ because a student at the graduate level may not necessarily have the luxury of picking something that they ‘like more’ to focus on. Perhaps in a pedagogical approach, in example K-12, but certainly in the world of andragogy, a student may have to ‘suck it up’ so to speak, and figure out a way to learn what they are required to learn to pass a required class on their journey to achieve their educational goals. I really believe that it is in these tougher courses that a student’s metacognitive astuteness is tested. A student won’t always have the luxury of taking a subject they like but must know what it takes to pass any class presented.

“Metacognitive practices increase students’ abilities to transfer or adapt their learning to new contexts and tasks”, (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, p. 12). So regardless of whether it is a subject that they enjoy, knowledge of one’s own metacognition can bring success in learning.

Edutopia and Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching present clearly written articles that spoke succinctly to metacognitive approaches to learning as well as instructing. I highly recommend these sites as an added resource for the IDT professional that wants to focus on adult learning success and how metacognition can help inform design strategy.

Sources:-

Bransford, John D., Brown Ann L., and Cocking Rodney R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/metacognition/

Wilson, D. (2014, October 7). Metacognition: The Gift That Keeps Giving. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/metacognition-gift-that-keeps-giving-donna-wilson-marcus-conyers