Metacognition, self-regulated learning and critical thinking

Metacognition, self-regulated learning and critical thinking

Are there steps that schools could take to encourage metacognition, self-regulated learning, and critical thinking in their adolescent students? What sorts of practices might tend to discourage these developments? Can you recall examples of each from your own experience?

Metacognition, self-regulated learning and critical thinking plays a significant role in improved learning since it assists students to become efficient at focusing on their learning process. According to the research, the most metacognitive stage happens between the age of twelve to fifteen(Whitebread and Pino Pasternak, 2010). Teachers play a vital role in helping the students to acquire critical thinking skills as well as metacognition. When a teacher helps the student to develop abilities to reflect, monitor, and evaluate their learning strategies, they become the best people in society because they become more flexible, self-reliant, and productive. Improving metacognitive skills among students enables the students to reflect and grow their social and emotional lives. The following are steps that schools should take to encourage metacognition, self-regulated learning, and critical thinking;

Allow the students to recognize what they don’t understand- Sometimes, the students may be confused and not understand the concept taught in class. It’s always reasonable and is an integral part of developing self-awareness. Therefore, teachers should spare time at the end of the most difficult concept and ask the students the most confusing material or chapter they didn’t understand well. This creates metacognitive thinking among students as well as creating the classroom culture that identifies confusion as a vital part of learning.

Teachers can also use lecture wrapper to teach self-regulating or monitoring skills. A wrapper is a particular activity that surrounds a given assignment and encourages metacognitive behavior among students s (Susan, Robert, and Debi, 2019). For example, before the lecture, teachers give students some essential points on active listening as they think, listen, and put down important points. At the end of the lesson, students write what they believe are three or four essential ideas from the lecture and hand into the teacher, and the instructor immediately reveals the three points he or she was looking for. The strategy is critical as it allows the students to monitor their active listening skills.

Teachers should also provide essay based questions to the students – Research shows that students use a lower level of thinking skills to prepare for their multiple-choice examination and higher-level metacognitive skills as well as critical thinking to prepare for essay exams (Susan, Robert, and Debi, 2019). Although it’s less time consuming to grade multiple choice exams, it’s advised that teachers should at least provide additional short essay questions as it improves the reflective thinking of the students. Furthermore, instructors should encourage learners to keep learning journals as they help them to monitor their thinking. This can be achieved by assigning weekly questions that help the student to reflect on what they have learned over the week. The journals can be in the form of maps, diaries, e-tools, or even maps.

Although the teachers might try to encourage metacognition among students, there still exist factors that hinder metacognition, self-regulated learning, and critical thinking. These include egocentric thinking, groupthink, drone mentality, overconfidence, biased experiences, and scheduled pressure from teachers, which hinder crucial thinking among students. I would say that when I joined college, I was so overconfident that when I was asked the grade I anticipated earning in my science course, I was quick to say 98%, but this never happened.

References

Whitebread, D., and Pino Pasternak, D. (2010). Metacognition, self-regulation & meta-knowing. In K. Littleton, C. Wood, and J. Kleine Stearman (Eds.), International Handbook of Psychology in Education (pp. 673–712)

Susan, O. Robert, P., and Debi, P. ( 2019). Teaching with and for Metacognition in Disciplinary Discussions, Metacognition in Learning, Available from:

https://www.intechopen.com/books/metacognition-in-learning/teaching-with-and-for-metacognition-in-disciplinary-discussions accessed on 9th February 2020