Teaching Students to Drive Their Brains

Metacognitive Strategies, Activities, and Lesson Ideas

Donna Wilson, Marcus Conyers

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781416622147
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

If the difference between a student's success and failure were something specific you could teach, wouldn't you? Metacognition is exactly that—a tool that helps students unlock their brain's amazing power and take control of their learning. Educational researchers and professional developers Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers have been exploring and using the explicit teaching of metacognition for years, and in this book they share a practical way to teach preK-12 students how to drive their brains by promoting the following practices: * Adopt an optimistic outlook toward learning,
* Set goals,
* Focus their attention,
* Monitor their progress, and
* Engage in practices that enhance cognitive flexibility. Wilson and Conyers explain metacognition and how it equips students to meet today's rigorous education standards. They present a unique blend of useful metaphors, learning strategies, and instructional tips you can use to teach your students to be the boss of their brains. Sample lessons show these ideas in a variety of classroom settings, and sections on professional practice help you incorporate these tools (and share them with colleagues and parents) so that you are teaching for and with metacognition. Research suggests that metacognition is key to higher student achievement, but studies of classroom practice indicate that few students are taught to use metacognition and the supporting cognitive strategies that make learning easier. You can teach metacognition to your students, so why wouldn't you? This book shows you how.

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Chapter 1

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The Case for Teaching for and with Metacognition

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Metacognition is an essential, but often neglected, component of a 21st century education that teaches students how to learn. From preschool through high school, the instructional schedule is packed with content lessons with little time for guiding students in developing the metacognitive and cognitive skills that can help them excel in the classroom and in the working world. Although the curriculum and professional development may cover instruction on cognitive strategies, the daily schedule may not provide the explicit teaching and intensive practice students need to learn how, when, where, and why to use these strategies effectively. The assumption seems to be either that children arrive at school naturally equipped with the ability to learn or that they will pick up these skills on their own in the course of learning how to read, write, and do math, science, and social studies—or not. Extending this assumption, students who do not develop thinking and learning abilities on their own are often dismissed as having limited learning potential.

As the research shows, we now know that metacognitive and cognitive abilities are not naturally endowed but can and should be taught and learned. Furthermore, providing this foundation for students through explicit instruction alongside core subject lessons will help develop their abilities to become self-directed learners who are better able to improve their academic performance across the curriculum and effectively transfer and apply what they have learned. As Dunlosky asserts, "teaching students how to learn is as important as teaching them content, because acquiring both the right learning strategies and background knowledge is important—if not essential—for promoting lifelong learning" (2013, pp. 12–13).

Defining Metacognition

Metacognition involves thinking about one's thinking, or cognition, with the goal of enhancing learning. Much of the educational theory and research surrounding metacognition is based on the work of developmental psychologist John Flavell, who applied this terminology in describing the management of information-processing activities that occur during cognitive transactions. "Metacognition refers, among other things, to the active monitoring and consequent regulation and orchestration of these processes … usually in service of some concrete goal or objective" (1976, p. 232). More simply put, metacognition involves being knowledgeable about and in control of one's cognitive abilities:

Metacognitive knowledge includes knowledge about oneself as a learner and the factors that might impactperformance, knowledge about strategies, and knowledge about when and why to use strategies. Metacognitive regulation is the monitoring of one's cognition and includes planning activities, awareness of comprehension and task performance, and evaluation of the efficacy of monitoring processes and strategies. (Lai, 2011, p. 2)

A student uses metacognition when she reads an unfamiliar word and decides to use two strategies she has learned to puzzle out a word's meaning—breaking it down into components and looking for contextual clues. After she checks her guess against the glossary in the textbook, she thinks, "I was fairly close, and this was good practice. I might run across words I don't know when I take the SAT, and I won't be able to look those up." Another student studying for a test is being metacognitive when he consciously uses several memory strategies and compares them to determine which one seems to work the best for enhancing recall. The goal of teaching students to be metacognitive is to guide them to consciously, and with increasing independence, recognize when and how to employ cognitive strategies that work best for them across various situations.

Hand in hand with teaching metacognition is explicit instruction on the use of these cognitive strategies, or cognitive assets. We use the term assets to convey that these abilities are extremely valuable and can be enhanced with practice and regular use. Throughout this text, we will present a variety of cognitive assets—specific tools that can be used to complete tasks and to transfer learning across a variety of contexts. Students employ these cognitive assets across core content to

• Maintain an outlook of practical optimism about their learning performance,
• Set learning goals and plan to achieve them,
• Focus their selective attention and optimize working memory,
• Monitor their learning progress, and
• Apply their learning experiences across core subjects and in their personal lives.

Historically, educators focused on the cognitive deficits that students bring to learning tasks, which were regarded as relatively fixed and used to explain poor academic performance. By changing our focus to cognitive assets, we aim to communicate that strategies for improving learning performance can be taught, learned, and improved with practice. Refocusing on strengths rather than deficits leads to a more incremental view of learning, sometimes referred to as a growth mindset (Dweck, 2006) and dynamic intelligence.

Viewing learning as an incremental process applies to virtually all students, whatever their performance levels. In the United States, instruction in higher-order thinking processes has often been reserved for students identified as gifted. Of course, high-performing students benefit from learning how to wield metacognitive and cognitive strategies—and so do their peers, including students with learning challenges. In fact, teaching struggling learners how, when, and why to use these strategies may help them catch up in academic performance and recognize that they can succeed in achieving learning goals with hard work and persistent effort. After teaching students with moderate to severe disabilities how to use cognitive skills as part of instruction on core subject lessons, California middle school teacher Paul Farmer reported that "the accumulation of small incremental changes over time might result in measurable and meaningful functional outcomes" (personal correspondence, January 10, 2013).

The cognitive assets make up a toolbox of versatile thinking tools that can be taught—but not in isolation from metacognition. Students must learn how to use metacognition to know how and when to use these assets to successfully master learning and problem-solving challenges, both inside and outside the classroom, and to assess how well they are using these strategies. A variety of cognitive assets are presented in the following chapters. Paired with instruction on when and how to use these assets—to apply a metacognitive approach—students can learn to wield powerful tools that can help them in school and life contexts, from taking tests to maintaining healthy and positive relationships with friends and family.

The use of metacognition and cognitive strategies engages two levels of thinking. The first level involves applying a cognitive strategy to solve a problem; the second involves using metacognition to select and monitor the effectiveness of that strategy. Hattie describes metacognition as "higher order thinking, which involves active control over the cognitive process engaged in learning" (2009, p. 188). Teaching students to be metacognitive involves building their knowledge about cognition and their ability to take charge of their brainpower; enhancing their understanding of how, why, and when to use the cognitive assets that are essential in learning how to learn; and assessing how well they are using cognitive assets and what they might do to improve their learning.

Here are several other terms associated with metacognition:

• Executive function describes the brain processes and mental faculties involved in goal setting, planning and execution, reasoning, problem solving, working memory, and organization.
• Higher-order thinking, sometimes called critical thinking, generally refers to going beyond the rote memorization of facts to skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, and transferring knowledge to other applications.
• Self-regulation and self-directed learning are accomplished by guiding students to recognize that they are in charge of their emotions, thoughts, and actions, and by equipping them with strategies and skills to steer their feelings, thinking, and behaviors in positive and productive directions.
• Mindfulness refers to focusing one's consciousness on current feelings, thoughts, and sensations. By being mindful of their emotional state, for example, teachers and students can more effectively steer their feelings and thoughts in a more positive, "can-do" direction (see Chapter 3).

The center of these cognitive functions in the brain is the prefrontal cortex, located directly behind the forehead. Goldberg describes the prefrontal cortex as the brain's "chief executive officer" for its role in "forming goals and objectives and then in devising plans of action required to obtain these goals. It selects the cognitive skills required to complete the plans, coordinates these skills, and applies them in correct order" (2009, p. 23). More recent research (Fleming, 2014) also identifies this area of the brain—specifically the anterior prefrontal cortex—as the center of metacognition.

Executive function, higher-order thinking, and self-regulation can all be improved over time using metacognition. If these cognitive functions and assets perform as musicians in the orchestra of learning, then metacognition is the conductor. The conductor chooses which works to perform, leads the musicians through intensive practice, maintains the tempo, directs various sections to take the lead at times, and reviews the performance to pinpoint where fine-tuning may be needed. In the same way, by developing our metacognitive capacities, we can better direct our attention to the learning task at hand, choose which cognitive assets are needed for the task, monitor our performance, and identify how we might improve our learning.

Because the concepts of metacognition and executive function can seem quite abstract, using phrases like "driving your brain" or identifying metacognition as the conductor of the orchestra of learning can help make these ideas more concrete and practical for students. And it is certainly worth the effort to teach students how they can take charge of their learning and, by monitoring and improving their use of the cognitive assets, make steady gains in learning.

Why Teach for Metacognition?

The traditional emphasis on subject matter knowledge—with little or no time allotted to teach metacognitive and cognitive strategies—may not adequately prepare students for college and career. A report from the National Research Council on "Education for Life and Work" (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012) identifies three domains of 21st century competencies—cognitive (thinking and reasoning), intrapersonal (regulating one's behaviors and emotions to achieve goals), and interpersonal (relating to others and understanding others' points of view)—that are supported by many of the cognitive assets featured in this text.

No longer is it enough to demonstrate an understanding of the curriculum or to know how to use basic learning skills. Rather, students must be able to deploy content knowledge and apply thinking strategies appropriately on their own in new learning situations. In short, they may benefit from "the full range of metacognitivestrategies … to monitor and direct their thinking and learning" (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010a, p. 4). As Billings and Roberts note in Educational Leadership, the Common Core State Standards emphasize the development of skills to support independent learning and college and career readiness and "assume that teachers are ultimately teaching students to think—the most difficult and important literacy skill of all" (2012/2013, p. 72). Metacognition is at the heart of our approach to learning and teaching students to think.

Instructional strategies that emphasize metacognition in supporting new standards have a solid record of success, according to educational research. In a meta-analysis of 91 studies, Wang, Haertel, and Walberg (1993) determined that metacognition is the number one shared characteristic of high academic achievers. On a more recent list of 150 factors that influence student achievement, metacognitive strategies were ranked 15th; by comparison, student socioeconomic status (which is often assumed to be a major influence on students' learning potential) was ranked 45th (Hattie, 2012). "Strong learners can explain which strategies they used to solve a problem and why, while less competent students monitor their own thinking sporadically and ineffectively and offer incomplete explanations" (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012, p. 92). The encouraging conclusion is that the gap between high achievers and struggling students can be closed by guiding the latter to develop a metacognitive approach to learning.

Other research supports the importance of metacognition for learning across contexts and provides a wide body of evidence that metacognitive strategies can be taught and learned (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Efklides & Misailidi, 2010; Hacker, Dunlosky, & Graesser, 2009; Hartman, 2002; Lai, 2011; Winne & Azevedo, 2014). A 2014 study by Veenman and colleagues suggests that the ability to apply a metacognitive approach to learning may account for some 40 percent of the variation in academic achievement across a range of outcomes. Lai (2011) reports on classroom research in which teachers included explicit instruction on the use of metacognition alongside math lessons, stating that 8th graders who learned about metacognition outperformed peers in a comparison group in their abilities to interpret graphs, explain math concepts and reasoning, and transfer math knowledge to other applications. In fact, extensive research on the explicit teaching of metacognitive and cognitive strategies indicates that when students are taught how to learn and think, they can achieve at higher academic levels (Allington, 2011; Anderman & Anderman, 2009; Cawelti, 2004; Good & Brophy, 2008; Hartman, 2010; Hattie, 2009; Marzano, 2007; Marzano & Pickering, 2011).

Despite the wealth of research on the importance of teaching metacognition, educational practice in the United States continues to focus almost exclusively on content knowledge. Baker (2013) writes that "metacognitive strategies instruction is still not commonly observed in most primary and secondary classrooms, and interviews with teachers have revealed limited knowledge about metacognition and how to foster it." A major study of lessons taught in hundreds of elementary classrooms found that, on average, 5th graders received 500 percent more instruction on basic skills than on metacognition and higher-order thinking skills; the ratio for 1st and 3rd graders was 10:1 (Pianta, Belsky, Houts, & Morrison, 2007).

These findings are especially discouraging given that metacognition is at the heart of learning. The Educational Psychology Committee of the American Psychological Association formallydefines learning as creating meaningful representations of knowledge through internally mediated processes including self-awareness, self-questioning, self-monitoring, and self-regulation (APA Division 15 Committee on Learner-centered Teacher Education for the 21st Century, 1995). These are the same processes at the core of metacognition, but this approach to learning is not a birthright. Many students do not come to school ready to achieve at high levels. The academic performance of most children and teenagers, whatever their current levels of achievement, can be enhanced by explicit instruction on the use of metacognitive and cognitive strategies. Receiving this instruction can help students to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to succeed as learners in the 21st century and to develop "the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic"(National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010a, p. 3).

Becoming more metacognitive helps learners of all ages—children, teenagers, and adults—proactively determine what they know and what they need to know in order to succeed. A metacognitive mindset toward learning has also been linked to increasing motivation because students who are taught to use these thinking strategies are more confident about their academic abilities and understand that persistence in the sometimes hard work of learning will pay off.

Teachers who have earned their graduate degrees in the programs we codeveloped with Nova Southeastern University (NSU) call metacognition the gift that keeps on giving—to their students and in their own professional practice and personal lives. In a survey of these teachers regarding what they learned about metacognition in their graduate studies, 88 percent of respondents agreed that they are better equipped to teach their students how to be better thinkers, and 83 percent agreed that their students have developed a better understanding of how to improve their own learning (Harman & Germuth, 2012). In an ethnographic study of program graduates, a kindergarten teacher commented that teaching her students to think about their thinking has helped them to regulate their behavior and choices:

"Teaching them how to think about multiple ways to solve problems has helped students become more focused, calmer, problem-solve more, and better at working out things between themselves versus needing to get the teacher involved," she said. This way of teaching, she believes, "helps with behavior management" and has resulted in a better classroom climate where her students "have more respect for one another…work in harmony more, and work things out more than putting it back on the teacher." (Germuth, 2012, pp. 12–13)

Another NSU graduate who teaches English as a second language to elementary students credited explicit instruction on the use of metacognitive and cognitive strategies as one factor in the significant decrease in the rate of students who did not meet state reading comprehension strategies, from 72 percent at the beginning of the school year to 17 percent near the end of the year. Regarding the outcome of becoming more metacognitive in her own practice, this teacher noted that "I was able to be more consistent about how and when to use strategies and recognize what works for different kids, and this shows up in [test] scores" (Germuth, 2012, p. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction to Metacognition
• Chapter 1. The Case for Teaching for and with Metacognition
• Chapter 2. Metacognition and the Learning Brain
• Chapter 3. Practical Optimism to Improve Motivation and Productivity
• Chapter 4. Goal Setting and Planning for Learning
• Chapter 5. Selective Attention and Working Memory
• Chapter 6. Strategies for Self-Monitoring and Learning with Peers
• Chapter 7. Start and Finish Strong with Metacognition
• References
• Study Guide
• Related ASCD Resources
• About the Author
• Copyright