Professional Documents
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Shawn Taylor
To cite this article: Shawn Taylor (1999) Better Learning through Better Thinking: Developing
Students' Metacognitive Abilities, Journal of College Reading and Learning, 30:1, 34-45, DOI:
10.1080/10790195.1999.10850084
Shawn 7llylor, Ed.D., received his doctorate in history and philosophy ofeducation
at Rutgers Graduate School of Education, New Jersey. He serves as Learning
Specialist and Tutor Coordinator for the Learning Resource Center, Rutgers Newark
Campus.
Self-Appraisal
Two essential features undergird the definition of metacognition:
self-appraisal and self-management (Paris & Winograd 1990, p.17).
Learning is not just a cognitive process, but an affective one as well.
Self-appraisals are peoples' personal reflections about their knowledge
states and abilities, and their affective states concerning their knowl-
edge, abilities, motivation, and characteristics as learners. Such reflec-
tions answer questions about "what you know, how you think, and
when and why to apply knowledge or strategies" (Paris & Winograd,
1990, p. 17). A great deal of evidence has been generated in recent
years supporting the claim that students have entrenched beliefs about
what they can do and what they cannot do (Marsh, 1992). Students
bring with them not only their prior knowledge and intellectual skills
but also their attitudes and expectations about the subject, about them-
selves in relation to it, and about the learning process (Gourgey, 1992;
Hartman, 1990; Schoenfeld, 1987).
These beliefs go far in determining academic tasks that students will
attempt and those they will avoid (Bandura, 1995). Many people, for
example, are convinced they are terrible at solving mathematical word
problems. Because they assume every mathematical word problem will
forever evade them, they are little motivated to attempt a solution, and
even less motivated to monitor and regulate their attempts. Similarly,
stress and anxiety overwhelm many students whenever they are asked
to give an oral presentation in front of a group of peers, thereby mak-
ing it nearly impossible for them to monitor and regulate their per-
formance. Yet by assessing those affective elements that interfere with
their progress, students can defeat these irrational, self-defeating
thoughts. More important, such self-assessment often serves as moti-
vation for further assessments concerning strategies for overcoming
other seemingly intractable problems. Indeed, these
personal-motivational states often "determine the course of new strat-
egy acquisition and, more importantly, the likelihood of strategy trans-
fer and the quality of self-understanding about the nature and function
of mental processes" (Borkowski, Carr, Rellinger, & Pressley, 1990, p.
54).
Self-Management
In addition to self-appraisal, the second component of metacognition,
self-management, refers to "metacognition in action," that is, mental
processes that help to "orchestrate aspects of problem solving" (Paris &
Winograd, 1990, p. 18). Each academic subject raises a unique set of
questions about itself that must be asked and answered systematically
Better Learning Through Better Thinking 39
Conclusion
Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, the American phi-
losopher and educator John Dewey noted, "No educational question is
of greater import than how to get the most logical good out oflearning
through transmission from others" (1997, p. 197). Dewey's observation
is as relevant today as it was almost a century ago. Students are taught,
in large part, to live in two separate worlds, one is the world of out-of-
school experience, the other is the world of books and lessons. Thus,
the means by which information is communicated are often inadequate,
making learning unnecessarily difficult for some students. The text-
book, to take just one example, is commonly the primary educational
tool in the classroom. As a vehicle for conveying information, how-
ever, textbooks are far from an ideal medium. Most texts are dry, infor-
mation-dense and packed with unfamiliar terms. More important, there
is no way anyone textbook can conform to a student's particular needs
40 Journal of CollegeReading and Learning, 30 (1), Fall 1999
and learning style. The chief drawback with textbooks is that they can
only present information linearly, one piece at a time, while a stu-
dent's mind needs to see how those pieces fit together.
Although books by themselves, or lectures for that matter, cannot
supply all of the solutions for the student, they do offer suggestions.
The sources of these suggestions are the student's past experience and
prior knowledge. These two qualities become the student's
metacognitive resources. Suggestions more or less apt and helpful are
more likely to lend themselves if a student has had some acquaintance
with similar situations or if the student has dealt with material of the
same sort before. Unless there has been experience in some degree
analogous, the student will remain confused. Without some sort of
metacognitive experience, there is little else for the student to draw
upon in order to clarify the material. To urge a student to think when
they have no prior experience involving some of the same conditions
is ineffective.
If the material learned is to become an intellectual asset for the stu-
dent, then it should be relevant to a question that is vital in the stu-
dent's own metacognitive experience. Students assimilate new mate-
rial from what they have digested and retained from prior experience.
Thus, the material given by the instructor and textbook should be found,
as far as possible, in what the learner has derived from more direct
forms of the student's experience. Failure to do this results in an accu-
mulation of isolated knowledge, inert facts that work to stifle instead
of enlarge and refine the student's experience. Course material that
does not fit into any problem already stimulating the student's mind
consequently becomes an obstruction in the way of effective thinking
when a problem arises.
The challenge of metacognition lies in adjusting the academic task
to the nature of thought of the student. This can be accomplished by
asking questions to remind the student offamiliar experiences oftheir
own that will be useful in acquiring the new topic. Metacognition is
specific, in that different things suggest their appropriate meanings,
and in that they do this in very different ways with different students.
What one already knows supplies the means with which one appre-
hends the unknown. Hence, the process of learning the new will be
made easier if related ideas in the student's mind are aroused to activ-
ity and brought to the student's consciousness. For this to occur, the
student must change and personalize the information by asking ques-
tions and posing problems. It is the sense of a problem that forces the
student's mind to search and recall past experiences, and to discover
what the question means and how it may be dealt with. The question
Better Learning Through Better Thinking 41
What does this remind me of? gets the student thinking in terms of
analogies and metaphors, and starts the process of connecting the new
information to what the student already knows.
Contrast this approach with the all too common practice of high-
lighting words on a page or other passive activities where nothing raises
a question or suggests alternative outcomes. Unless a comparison of
the familiar and the unfamiliar is introduced at the beginning, stu-
dents will continue to encounter a loss of understanding. This prob-
lem afflicts most severely those who are just getting started in a new
field of knowledge, typically students who are learning how to think
and write in some academic area new to them, in some well-defined
"community of discourse" to which they do not yet belong. Some items
of familiar experience must be brought to conscious recognition. The
problem is the discovery of intervening terms and experiences, which
when inserted between the remoter end and the given means, will
evoke other associations.
Fortunately, students can be assisted in discovering their
metacognitive experiences. Metacognitive assessment-engaging in a
genuine interest in understanding students' thinking-offers a novel
way, through dialogue, of getting inside the mind of a student. Free
human dialogue, wandering wherever the agility of the mind allows,
lies at the heart of a learning conversation. In fact, when we allow our
memory to be freely active the course of associated recollections is
never the same, and this apparently random ebb and flow ofthoughts
is the source of all novelty and invention. Regrettably, developmental
students often lack the knowledge of how to engage in this internal
dialogue. Th enhance learning to the fullest and help students acquire
integrative learning skills, learners need to become aware of them-
selves as vibrant self-regulatory organisms who can consistently and
deliberately achieve specific goals (Kluwe, 1982).
Thtors, learning assistants, and learning professionals, for their part,
can become what Barrows calls, the student's "metacognitive con-
science" (1988) by asking questions for the student in order to develop
his or her awareness and analytical processes. Such questions might'
include: What preparation does the student have for attacking this sub-
ject? What familiar experiences of theirs are available? What have they
already learned that will come to their assistance? 'Io what objects shall
I call their attention? What examples shall I cite? What comparisons
shall I lead them to draw and what similarities to recognize? What is
the general principle toward which the whole discussion should point
to its conclusions? What activities of their own may bring it home to
them as a genuinely significant principle?
42 Journal of Goliege Reading and Learning, 30 (1), Fall 1999
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