Greg Thomas PhD MACE gthomas1@ualberta.ca Developing and enhancing students as effective learners: The case for Metacognition Greg Thomas PhD MACE gthomas1@ualberta.ca

Where do I Start? I was born in 1959. Back then the world was different. There were no mobile phones. The was no colour TV. There were no microwave ovens. There was no Internet or Web. There had been no landing on the moon. There was no notion of climate change. People often stayed in one job a long time. Many, many people did not complete schooling past year 10.

We have been forewarned of change. …we can conclude that knowledge will grow increasingly perishable. Today’s ‘fact’ becomes tomorrow’s ‘misinformation.’ This is no argument against learning facts and data – far from it. But a society in which the individual constantly changes their job, their place of residence, their social ties and so forth, places an enormous premium on learning efficiency. Tomorrow’s schools must therefore teach not merely data but ways to manipulate it. Students must learn to discard old ideas, how and when to replace them. They must, in short, learn how to learn.” (Toffler, 1970)

‘Learning to learn’ already has some countries that advocate its importance Singapore: explored the notion of developing students’ cognitive abilities to seek a competitive economic edge. In 1996 launched the Thinking Program to develop students’ creative thinking and their awareness of the use of specific thinking strategies. “If Hong Kong wishes to become a knowledge-based economy in the information age, we must continue to innovate and change…we must embrace "life-long learning." School education should aim at fostering in students an interest and an ability in learning so that they are able to acquire knowledge throughout their lives and respond effectively to changing circumstances.” (Tung, Hong Kong Chief Executive, 1999)

What does this word mean to you? LEARN What are your ideas? How would you describe to another person how YOU go about learning in the subject area(s) you teach in.

What does this word mean to you? THINK What are your ideas? How would you describe to another person what happens inside your head when you ‘think.’

One way of defining thinking Thinking: the type of human doing that emerges when individuals become capable of communicating with themselves the way they communicate with others. Key idea: Communicating with oneself. Cognitive (thinking) processes may thus be defined as individualized forms of interpersonal communication. (Anna Sfard, 2008)

Is there a relationship between learning and thinking? Is it possible to teach students how to LEARN? (Consider your position.)

Is it possible to teach students to THINK? Explain your position. Why is it important for you to understand your own learning and thinking processes? Is it possible to teach students to THINK? Explain your position.

A Perspective on Thinking and Learning Good learning often involves good thinking. T or F Learning and thinking involves communicating with yourself: T or F To communicate with yourself you use language and images and other memory elements. T or F To talk with yourself about thinking and learning you need to have a language of thinking and learning. T or F If you want to teach students to think and learn better you need to teach them about what thinking and learning is. To do this you need to have knowledge about thinking and learning and a language to talk with them about such things. T or F I am now (maybe) more aware of some aspects of how I think and learn

A rejoinder to some earlier ideas Do you think it is important for our current school students and those of the future to be good (adaptive) thinkers and learners? If so, what might be your role as a teacher in developing and enhancing their thinking and learning?

METACOGNITION

Metacognition (1) Knowledge, (2) control and (3) awareness of the cognitive and strategic processes that we (personally) and others use to think and learn.

Put another way: An person’s metacognition is their (1) Knowledge, (2) Control, and (3) Awareness of the individualized forms of interpersonal communication that they (personally) and others use to think and learn. Therefore, to assist students modify their metacognition we target their consideration of their knowledge, control, and awareness of how they communicate with themselves.

So, there is a ‘knowledge’ component Three types of knowledge Declarative Learning is…………. Thinking is…………. Procedural I learn ‘x’ by …………… I think about ‘x’ by……………. I think when I……….. He/she learns ‘x’ by…….. They learn ‘x’ by……….. Conditional I use this learning process when……(this goal or situation) I use this thinking process when……(this goal or situation) I use this learning strategy at this time because…………. I don’t use this learning strategy at this time because………….

Ask yourself - “Do I use different types of thinking at different times and/or in different circumstances?”  Can I give some examples? “Do I use different types of strategies when I want to learn different things?” It is important for students to construct declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge about learning and thinking to develop their metacognition? T or F

The fact that there is a knowledge base to metacognition is very(n) important because … It means we can provide students with information about thinking and learning and they can construct their own metacognitive knowledge that is adaptive for their learning contexts.

A Caveat All students are metacognitive (to varying extents), i.e., they all come to our classes with varying knowledge, control and awareness of their learning processes. (You too!) (Just like prior knowledge of content.) The key question is, “How do we help develop and enhance students’ metacognition that is adaptive for their learning contexts?”

Metacognitive Experiences Conscious experiences related to cognitive endeavors or metacognitive knowledge. They are often emotionally linked. These experiences are keys to developing metacognition as they provide the raw, stimulatory material for reflection that might lead to the development of metacognitive knowledge.

BUT WHAT TO DO? To develop and enhance students’ metacognition teachers need to provide opportunities for students to reflect on specific, conscious metacognitive experiences.

To do this, we need to develop.. Metacognitively Oriented Learning Environments - The metacognitive orientation of a learning environment is the extent to which that environment supports the development and enhancement of students’ metacognition. (Thomas, 2003)

7 Dimensions for you to define: (The extent to which…) Metacognitive Demands Student-student Discourse Student-teacher Discourse Student Voice Distributed Control Teacher Encouragement and Support Emotional Support Define Define Define Define Define Define Define

In metacognitively oriented classroom learning environments: Teachers model what it means to learn, to know, to think … they do this through action and discourse … it is deliberate, planned …they provide tasks and then elaborate and guide the students thinking by using themselves (and how they think and learn) as role models for students to learn from… so they become known as learning (of ‘x’) experts … not just content and teaching experts.

BACK TO OUR CLASSROOMS: OTHER SUGGESTIONS To teach students how to think and learn you can share with them:   How you think (not just what you think) about subject matter, your own subject learning experiences, The importance of considering how they think as well as what they think, Use a language of thinking, Use thinking words, e.g., evaluate, analyze, critique, and explicitly explain the meanings of these words to students (often they do not know what they mean), Rich learning tasks that require varied cognition

Scripting (deliberate use of words) “Today in this lesson I want you to think about building on the (subject) information we considered yesterday. To do this you will have to ask yourself, “How does what I am doing today relate to what I did yesterday?” If you can find connections between what you do today and what you did yesterday you are more likely to understand today’s material and remember it for a longer time. This is good learning.”

“Today we are going to start a new topic “Today we are going to start a new topic. Now, I suspect that you already know something about this new topic. I want to write down as much as you can in 5 minutes about what you know about ‘x.’ It is very important that you do this at the start of a new topic because to learn about this topic in more depth you will need to link the ideas that we will look at in class to what we already know. This is what good learning is like. It is like constructing a big spider web of ideas about a topic that all join together to help us make sense of that topic. If we don’t join the ideas together then they won’t make good sense for us.”

“Good learning is like building a house “Good learning is like building a house. You have to have a plan and you have to be willing to join all of the different materials (in learning we call the materials ideas and information) together so that they make a whole ‘house’ of knowledge.”

What sort of things can you think of saying to students?

Ideas from a Grade 7 geometry class Questions to students: "What sort of thinking processes do you use when you are developing your 'X' (design/plan)? Can you write these processes down on a piece of paper? If you had to explain them to someone in the class, the teacher or a classmate, how would you do this? What sort of language would you use?" The point of these questions is to get students thinking about how they describe the thinking they are doing (for any task) and get them to think about the language they use to talk about their thinking.

Ideas from a Grade 8 ELA class Topic: Essay writing Questions for students: What were you thinking when you were trying to write your essays? What type of things were you saying to yourself? How did you monitor the progress of your essay writing? What would you do differently next time to improve the process and thinking you used for essay writing? Question for students: How would you rate your thinking (on a 5 point scale) when you were writing your essay? Why do you give it this rating?

Looking to the future Until we attend more seriously to developing students’ metacognition we will not see our much desired noticeable improvement in their learning. Current curriculum reforms and initiatives have a ‘faddish’ stale taste about them and consist mainly of rehashing previous ideas and positions that have not previously brought about improvements in students’ learning.