Metacognition and Beyond: What Teachers Can Do to Help Students Become Better Learners
Dorothe BachAssociate Director Professor, General Faculty
Agenda
• Reflect on your own motivations, habits, skills and attitudes
• Explore strategies to enhance your students’ metacognitive and meta-affective skills
• Generate a plan for helping students become self-regulated learners
• Bonus: consider the role of joy, meaning and purpose for deep learning
Please respond to each question with a number between 0 and 7, with 0 being that this has no meaning or power for you and 7 being that this is deeply meaningful for you.
1. How valuable an experience do you plan to have in this workshop?
2. How participative do you plan to be?
3. How much risk do you plan to take?
4. How invested are you planning to be in the learning, well-being, and success of our learning community?
Discuss your answers with the person next to you:
• Did any of the questions surprise or intrigue you?
• Were any of the questions harder for you to answer than another?
• What may students learn by answering these questions?
What motivates you to do your best, most creative work, work that is deeply meaningful to you?
What knowledge, skills, habits and attitudes enable you to do this kind of work?
value expectancy motivationx
meta-affective
metacognitive
supportive environment
self-regulated learning
Metacognitive
The ability to…• think about one’s own thinking;• be consciously aware of oneself
as a problem solver;• monitor, plan, and control one’s
mental processing;• accurately judge one’s level of
learning
Meta-affective
The ability to…• reflect on one’s inclinations related to
emotions;• be consciously aware of and regulate
one’s own emotions in the moment;• accurately judge one’s level of
confidence, open-mindedness to challenging ideas, effort, etc.
Dimensions of self-regulated learning
• Developmental math course: 140 students, 6 sections
• Randomized control study (3 sections each)
• All had quizzes and same major exam and final exam
Treatment completed self-regulated learning activities:
• Received explanation on how errors offer learning opportunities
• Practiced error detection and strategy adaptation
• Shared all work and rated confidence in their ability to solve each problem
• Chance to earn back lost points by completing a self-reflection form for each
missed or incomplete; analysis and re-solving of similar problem
Zimmerman, Moylan, Hudesman, White,& Flugman (2011). Enhancing self-reflection and mathematics achievement of at-risk students at an urban technical college.
Course passed
• treatment group 68 %
• control group 49%
Gateway test passed
• treatment group 64 %
• control group 39%
Zimmerman, Moylan, Hudesman, White,& Flugman (2011). Enhancing self-reflection and mathematics achievement of at-risk students at an urban technical college.
Similar results in writing class!
Frontal integrative
cortex
Premotor and
motorSensory
and postsensory
Reflective observation
Abstracthypothesis
Activetesting
Concrete experience
Zull, James E. (2002). The Art of Changing the Brain. Stylus.
1
2
3
4
5
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
value expectancy motivationx
meta-affective
metacognitive
supportive environment
self-regulated learning
Passive Study Behaviors
• I came to class
• I reviewed my notes
• I made index cards
• I re-read/highlighted the text
• I asked a classmate or tutor to explain a concept to me
• I looked up information Aaron Jacobs 2005
What is the difference between studying and learning?
How would you learn if you were asked to teach the material to someone else?
Active Learning Behaviors
• I wrote my own study questions (and answered them)
• I tried to figure out the answer before looking it up
• I closed my notes and tested how much I remembered
• I broke down complex processes step by step
• I asked myself “How does it work?” or “Why does it work that way?”
• I pretended I was teaching the material to someone else
Exam/Paper Wrapper
Dear students,
We are ready to send you our feedback on your essays. Before we do so, we would like you to take another look at your research reflection, now that you have gained some distance. With a dispassionate heart, write us a brief email reflecting on the quality of what you see by considering these questions:
How much time did you spend doing each of these?
___ Reading research articles
___ Writing a draft of your paper
___ Editing your paper
Exam/Paper Wrapper (continued)
Looking at the rubric, what are the strengths and weaknesses of your research reflections? How could the essay be improved?
Describe your research and writing process, including the steps you took, what strategies you followed, what problems you encountered, and how you did or didn’t overcome them. Reflecting on your process, how could you improve it?
Lecture/video/podcast wrappers• recall checks• reflection on surprises,
connections or conflicts with prior knowledge, beliefs etc.
• concept maps
Course wrappers• how did I do so well in this
course?• reflection on course material• knowledge probe
Homework• think aloud• self-checks
Exam wrappers• test autopsy• reflective questions
value expectancy motivationx
meta-affective
metacognitive
supportive environment
self-regulated learning
1
Those of you who solved the puzzle: way to go!
If you didn’t, that’s o.k. Not everyone is good at spatial orientation puzzles.
2
This was a challenging task. If you weren’t able to solve it, you probably need more practice. Let’s talk about strategies for solving these types of puzzles and then try again.
Feedback
Think about:• What was your immediate response to
the statement? • How likely would you be to try another
puzzle?
1
Those of you who solved the puzzle: way to go!
If you didn’t, that’s o.k. Not everyone is good at spatial orientation puzzles.
2
This was a challenging task. If you weren’t able to solve it, you probably need more practice. Let’s talk about strategies for solving these types of puzzles and then try again.
Feedback
MindsetFixed Growth
• Those of you who solved the puzzle: way to go! If you didn’t, that’s o.k. Not everyone is good at spatial orientation puzzles.
• This was a challenging task. If you weren’t able to solve it, you probably need more practice. Let’s talk about strategies for solving these types of puzzles and then try again.
How to Encourage Students
Not everyone is good at math. Just do your best.
That’s ok. Maybe art just isn’t one of your strengths.
Don’t worry. You’ll get it if you keep trying. *
*If students are using the wrong strategies, their efforts might not work. Plus, they may feel particularly inept if their efforts are fruitless.
Great effort! You tried your best! *
* Don’t accept less than optimal performance from your students.
Fixed mindset (what NOT to say):
If you catch yourself thinking “I’m not a chemisty person,” just add the word, “yet.”
The point isn’t to get it all right away. The point is to build your understanding step by step. What can you try next?
When you learn how to do a new kind of problem, it builds new connections in your brain.
Yes, writing is hard, but it’s working through the challenges that helps you get better at it.
Growth mindset (what to say):
value expectancy motivationx
meta-affective
metacognitive
supportive environment
self-regulated learning
Transparency in teaching and learning
is the act of explicitly attending to and
articulating to students the whys and
hows of their learning experiences.
Purpose• What knowledge, skill, or attitudes will
students gain?
Task• What will students do? How will they do it?
Criteria for success• What does excellence look like?
TILT Higher Ed, Mary-Ann Winkelmes, 2014
Other learning-focused qualities• How will you help motivate and support
your students learning?
1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Less Transparent N=246
Less Transparent N=245
Less Transparent N=242
Less Transparent N=246
Amount of Transparency
(ES=.80)
Employee-valued Skills
(ES=.58)
Sense of Belonging
(ES=.64)
Academic Confidence
(ES=.50)
More Transparent N=188
More Transparent N=188
More Transparent N=183
More Transparent N=188
4-p
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5-p
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All Disciplines/All Students, End of Term
Winkelmes, M. –A., Bernacki, M., Butler, J., Zochowski, M., Golanics, J., & Harriss Weavil, K. (2016).A teaching intervention that increases underserved college students’ success. Peer Review, Winter/Spring.
Cultivating self-regulated learners
• Encourage goal setting and self-reflection (studying vs. learning, Bloom’s taxonomy, knowledge probe, “wrappers”)
• Foster a growth mindset (high expectations, view mistakes as learning opportunities, specific praise for effort and process)
• Create transparent assignments (purpose, task, criteria)
• Co-create learning experiences with students
• Nurture joy, purpose and meaning
The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is to running.
- Simone Weil
David Hilgart
Bain, K. (2012). What the best
college students do. Harvard University
Press.
Nilson, L. (2013). Creating self-regulated learners: Strategies to strengthen students? self-awareness and learning skills. Stylus.
McGuire, S. Y. (2015). Teach students how to learn: strategies you can incorporate into any course to improve student metacognition, study skills, and motivation. Stylus.
Zull, J. E. (2012). From brain to mind: Using neuroscience to guide change in education. Stylus.