The main concept of metacognition
is thinking about your own thinking. Metacognition is made up of two
components, metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation. Metacognitive
knowledge is ones actual knowledge and their self-evaluations of their knowledge.
Metacognitive regulation is the actual planning of tasks and strategies and
evaluating those strategies. A real world example of these two things could be
learning about state capitals by singing a song. The metacognitive knowledge
would be thinking about if you actually learned the capitals. The metacognitive
regulation would be if the song helped you learn the knowledge.
Metacognition also includes the
theory of mind, which is the understanding of the mind and the mental world.
The four characteristics of the theory of mind are false belief,
appearance-reality distinctions, visual perspective-taking, and introspection. There
are many strategies that teachers can use to help students based on
metacognition. Reciprocal teaching is when you structure a conversation to help
reading comprehension. Another strategies is PQ4R: preview, question, read,
reflect, recite, and review.
Thinking can be higher order or
lower order. Higher order thinking involves complex cognitive processes that
transform and apply our knowledge, skills, and ideas. This means that you can
apply the new knowledge. Lower order thinking involves only being able to
recall and recite knowledge. Critical thinking is a process in which the worth
or value of learned information is evaluated. Problem solving is the means we
use to reach a goal. The goals of critical thinking are to relate the
information learned with prior knowledge and be able to use the knowledge in
new innovative ways.
One question I have is what are
some examples of class projects that help develop critical thinking?
I think that Piaget would say that
critical thinking skills develop with the biological process of maturing and
developing. He may disagree that critical thinking must be taught. I think he
would say, it can be taught after and only after the abstract thinking
abilities have been developed in a child.
I think this is a great question. I think group projects of heterogeneous groups that allow the students to work around an open ended question that might lead them to make connections with previously learned things. Especially in younger grades, I think it is important to help guide the students into making these connections so that they become accustom to how to make these connections.
ReplyDeleteThere are tons of things you can do to promote critical thinking! One thing you can do is, for younger grades, read fairy tales. Then, ask them to see what these tell us about what we need to live "happily ever after." Finally, you could have your students create their own fairy tales. There are lots of great resources for ideas.
ReplyDeleteI like these suggestions. I think it's important to define exactly what you mean by critical thinking, or have a specific learning goal. If you want students to be able to compare options and choose the best one (a critical choice), then you can set up a task with multiple paths to solving or approaching it. Different groups can try each one, and then talk about why one worked or didn't work, or how they led different places....
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