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Re: [Phys-L] Metacognition



It is interesting that this issue has finally appeared. Really Raising
Standards was written in the 90s. Reuven Feuerstein used metacognition in
his Instrumental Enrichment which was developed in the 70s, and the 2 books
about it were published in 1980. So it seems that maybe people in academic
instruction are actually beginning to catch up belatedly. I first learned
about it 20 years ago. Anyone engaged in teaching or writing about it needs
to look at the literature and research before coming up with prescriptions
for it.

In its simplest form metacognition might be interpreted as examining your
conscience, something that is deemed necessary before confession according
to the Catholic church. But it goes much deeper. It should include
awareness of how you think. People need to be aware that their memories are
not generally accurate reflections of what happened bur reconstructions from
limited stored information, and that they can be changed by reconsolidation.
The example of understanding the underlying assumption is another piece in
metacognition. So when people insist that something actually happened, and
I have knowledge which contradicts that I always question the memory. But
when you do that the person becomes even stronger in their convictions. If
they used metacognition at that point they might go out and research the
topic to see if their memory was accurate. I have seen this a number of
times on this list.

There is an example of metacognition which comes from research about
incompetence. They find that incompetent people think they are very
competent. But when they are trained to recognize competence, they improve
and become more competent.

Another interesting piece in metacognition is recognizing that you can
change your ability to think. They found that students who are convinced
they can do this are then able to perform better in class. In other words
they begin to understand that they can change their thinking, so they are
thinking about their thinking.

PER actually is promoting metacognition because it asks students to think
about their answers. The Real Time Physics labs have questions which make
students think about what they just saw, and think about how it relates to
what they know. PER asks students to give predictions or even guess at what
the answer might be, and then asks them to examine why they gave that
answer. The Minds on Physics series has reflections where students do some
thinking about why they gave particular answers.

But notice that developing metacognition is not something that happens all
by itself. It comes through social interaction. Similarly the development
of understanding of concepts also happens through social interaction as
Vygotsky pointed out. Piaget was never very interested in the social
interactions, but he did say that development depends on society. He
studied development as if the organism was isolated, and he categorized the
various levels of scientific/mathematical thinking and also moral thinking.
But he apparently didn't have an interest in the levels of thinking in the
humanities. Often the social interaction that promotes development is
either unknown, or sometimes deliberately hidden or denied. Newton did that
with his famous quote about standing on the shoulders of giants where he was
denying the influence of Hooke who was a short man.

I would here comment on JDs idea that we should get students into
understanding concepts by themselves. Metacognition is certainly helpful,
but the idea that you usually understand concepts by yourself in isolation
is generally not done. PER relies on social interaction and has a large
success rate. Social interaction can be used to promote the understanding.
The paradigm that students should only work in isolation is very
destructive. The big problem with understanding concepts is that the
students have to consider them from a number of viewpoints. During social
interactions other viewpoints intrude and force students to examine their
thinking. Some students can do this by reading books and having the
authors' viewpoints intrude. This is classic Piagetian disequilibrium. The
one thing you can help students do is look at things by varying the
situations. In other words ask what if questions or use
hypothetico-deductive reasoning. But again social interaction is helpful
because it allows others to ask HD questions which one individual might not.

Incidentally bringing up this topic helped me make the connections between
the various things I said are forms of metacognition and the idea itself.
In other words the social interaction on this list was helpful to me.

It just occurred to me that psychopaths are unable to do certain types of
metacognition because they lack the empathy circuits. I wonder if some of
the vitriolic personal attacks made by some political pundits may be because
of low empathy. These people can not ask themselves how they would feel.
But psychopaths can analyze that they are different from others and can
learn how to be charming and appear to have empathy.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


Metacognition seems to be all the rage in education these
days and I'm thinking it is not just a passing fad but rather
a real key to making a positive difference in the lives of
our students. My guess is that metacognition has always been
part of teaching but at present I am interested in getting a
handle on it and seeing if I can use it in a more systematic
fashion for the benefit of my students. The definition I've
gotten for it is that metacognition is thinking about
thinking. (That wording, "thinking about thinking" appears
in Really Raising Standards by Philip Ady and Michael
Shayer.) Knowing the definition surely isn't enough to go on
as far as figuring out how to implement it (or bump up the
level of implementation if it is already being implemented)
so I figure I've got some reading to do (hopefully, some of
it right here on this list) but I've actually started my
study by, rather than reading about it, trying to engage in
it in a conscious fashion. Here's an example: