Teaching Students to Drive their Brains!!!

 Teaching Students to Drive their Brains!!!

This blog is a product of the intense discussion and feedback of my PBL group on Topic 4.  Our PBL's discussion has been published here.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself working on meta-cognition in learning.  I shall concentrate on meta-cognition in this blog. 

(source:https://vimeo.com/190268593)

 

The graphic above is the cover of a book and also a vimeo podcast (the link is provided in the caption).  Although the podcast was first published about FIVE years ago, I believe it is still relevant.  What appealed to me about the book title is that it succinctly and accurately describes my quest as an instructor.  In the past, I was focused on how to be a good instructor and how to improve students' learning.  But to teach them to drive their brains - that is the ultimate! and a totally refreshing perspective.

I started with not knowing anything about meta-cognition in learning.  The little that I have read, instantly appealed to me.  In spirituality, there is those who believe and those who seek for answers to questions.  Meta-cognition in learning is very much like making students "seekers" in their lifelong journey towards learning.  In this blog, I will not dwell on the activities and strategies of meta-cognition.  These have been extensively published and my blog will be just a drop compared to the ocean of knowledge on this subject that is readily available on the world wide web [1-5].  Instead, I will provide a link that serves as a great starting point on meta-cognition in learning[2].  This link claims to be the ultimate guide and I do not disagree.  The rest of the blog will concentrate on what is meta-cognition.

What is meta-cognition?

To define meta-cognition, it is perhaps important to know what cognition is.  The graphic below does exactly that.  When you have an inkling about "Thinking about your own thinking," the next projection will be naturally be to apply it to your own learning. 

(source: https://everettcc.instructure.com/courses/1500883/assignments/11085082)

The information flow in the metacognition model is described in the graphic below.  Successful students are said to possess better metacognitive skills than less successful students [6]. They are able to better control their cognitive skills.  If we think of cognition as being on "auto-pilot" with the brain functioning on past experiences and information, then meta-cognition is the ocassional interruption to the auto-pilot to monitor if any intervention is required to perform better. 

(source: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/metacognitionseffull-190701164448/95/developing-metacognition-7-638.jpg?cb=1561999535)

In the next graphic, an interesting issue of whether there is a continuum in meta-cognition is illustrated.  In developing metacognitive skills for her students, the instructor responsible for the graphic below had developed a continuum of skillsets for a lesson on how to describe a rhombus from the students' previous lessons about squares.



Concluding remarks

It is my humble opinion that adding meta-cognition to one's own practice as an instructor (I could have very simply referred to this as teaching, but I think the future of teaching is to facilitate the learning of  students.  Perhaps referring to teachers as instructors will be better.) will lead to a successful and satisfying career as an instructor. 

References

  1.  Activities for Metacognition.    https://resources.depaul.edu/teaching-commons/teaching-guides/learning-activities/Page/activities-for-metacognition.aspx   
  2. Supercharge learning power in your lessons with new metacognitive strategies!  https://www.globalmetacognition.com/post/metacognition-activities-strategies-the-ultimate-guide
  3. The Role of Metacognition in Teaching Geoscience: Teaching activities.  https://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/metacognition/activities.html
  4. Metacognition in the Classroom: Activities to Promote Metacognitive Learning.  https://edservices.wiley.com/metacognition-in-classroom-activities/
  5. Mastering Metacognition: The What, Why, and How.   https://www.activelylearn.com/post/metacognition 
  6. L. Baker, Metacognition, International Encyclopedia of Education (Third Edition), pp. 204-210, 2010

Comments

  1. Silviando3 March 2022 at 23:30

    Hi Subra, thank you for sharing your interest on metacognition. This topic is indeed very interesting and important. I agree that the future of teaching is to facilitate students' learning (and not to provide pre-established knowledge). This I think resonates with the idea of teaching as accompanying students becoming free thinkers.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Slow down in order to go quickly!!!

Image
  (source: https://focusresourcesinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/tortoise-hare.jpg) As topic 3 unfolded in our PBL group, it became quite clear that collaboration entails many aspects of learning. To view our flowerbed using the Lotus Blossom approach, please visit this   SITE . As my interests lay in scaffolding, I decided to create a blog post about it.  Most literature on scaffolding will warn you about the misconceptions between scaffolding and differentiation [1].  Differentiation in learning refers to the approaches in which students receive different methods of instruction depending on the instructor's perception of the aptitude of each of his students.  Scaffolding, on the other hand, refers to approaches that break up learning into chunks so that students can tackle increasingly more complex material. The Zone Lev Vygotsky proposed the Zone of Proximal Development and this has been the basis for scaffolding.   (source: https://www.letsgolearn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020
Read more

I am still Learning - Michelangelo

       ONL had suggested that I attempt this blog by answering the following five questions.  I will begin each of these questions with a popular quote, just as I have made the quote by Michelangelo as the title of this blog.  He succinctly embodies my sentiments after completing the ONL module.  I have learnt many new concepts and approaches that may be helpful in my journey as an educator in Engineering.  ONL has not quenched my intellectual thirst on learning, in fact, it has encouraged me to continue to search further and has made me realize that my journey will never end and I am not disappointed.  Let's move forward with the questions:     1.     What are the most important things that you have learnt through your engagement in the ONL course? Why? The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change. Carl Rogers I have learnt many things in the ONL course.  The foremost of these is surely meta-cognition.  Meta-cognition in brief is thinking abou
Read more