Metacognition is thinking about
your own thinking processes like study skills, memory capabilities, and the ability
to monitor your learning. This process
gets better as a student goes through school.
Around first grade it is harder for a student to be good at
metacognition but by the time the students go into middle school they have a
better understanding of metacognition.
Some of the factors that affect the development of metacognition are
belief about the nature of the task, motivation, prior knowledge about the
topic, and prior success using metacognitive skills. Metacognition will a help a student for
reading comprehension, taking notes, and studying. Critical thinking is the process of
evaluating the accuracy and worth of information and lines of reasoning. Critical thinking allows you to accurately
apply writing techniques, hypothesis testing, inductive reasoning and deductive
reasoning, and argument analysis. A way
to apply this in a first grade class is to allow the students work in groups to
solve a hard problem this will allow them to teach each other and in turn
critically think about the problem even if they do not get it correct.
The question that I have is can a
person still not have developed metacognition fully if they were not taught how
to critically look at themselves?
Lower-order thinking is just
repeating and going through the motions that the student has been taught and
done many times before. Higher-order
thinking is when the student is doing something that they have not been taught
but is putting previous knowledge and connecting it to come up with a new way
of solving or coming up with an answer.
We have been learning that
development is based on biological constraints which this goes along with that
because you learn better metacognition skills as you get older, but it has
nothing to do with the individual rather than everyone. This is the same for everyone.
I will assign an assignment that is
pretty hard for the students to understand unless they have been taking good
notes and been paying attention to the material. I will ask them what they think they will get
on the assignment. Depending on how well
they have been taking notes and paying attention will depend on the grade and
if they thought they were going to get a better grade it means they are not
doing everything they can in class. This
will give them an understanding on how well they are taking notes and
participating in class.
I really like your question. I'm not really sure when metacognition would occur because in a way we all undestand how well we learn, but I definitely think you aren't able to really understand your own learning until you're older. My thinking is a lot more advanced now than it was when I was younger so I'm able to better understand how to improve my own learning. I think that metacognition happens regardless because we are constantly thinking about how we learn. Even when we haven't learned how to critically look at ourselves, we still are aware of how we learn. I think that metacognition is inevitable regardless of what we are taught and how much we have learned.
ReplyDeleteMetacognition doesn't just improve on it's own as the student gets older. It needs to be taught and practiced. A lot of students that graduate still don't know how to think about their own thinking or judge what strategies work best for them.
ReplyDeleteIs collaboration the same thing as critical thinking? I don't think attempting a difficult problem is the same thing as critical thinking. What about it would make it critical? Are they comparing multiple options or perspectives?
Metacognition and critical thinking are two different things, as we distinguished in class. After 4 or so, children are all capable of metacognition, but it's definitely true that it won't be 'developed' or used well if they do not practice it. That's where you come in!
Your last example does including predicting performance, which is metacognition. However, I don't think you're supporting the students very well here. Just giving them a problem you think is difficult will not spontaneously cause metacognition or critical thinking. YOu need to support them and make your expectations clear--and teach them how to approach problems like those. I'd try modeling a self questioning strategy, or try out a variety of study strategies and then have a discussion about which worked best for each person and how they each felt.