METACOGNITION
Metacognition is the ability to think about our thinking, including our thought processes and the various strategies that we use to acquire and remember new knowledge and competencies.
HOW METACOGNITIVE SKILLS IMPACT LEARNING AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
According to research, the more students exercise their metacognitive skills and think about how they process and learn information, the more successful they are in their academic pursuits.
What are some examples of the types of metacognitive skills that support academic success in students? Typically, high-achieving students demonstrate the following skills:
- Effective study habits. They tend to study regularly in quiet surroundings by writing out information, taking notes, outlining information, and/or creating concept maps
- Focused attention. They also tend to visualize and connect information to pre-existing knowledge and to check their understanding
As students grow older, their metacognitive skills improve. This allows students to develop other effective study habits and strategies for thinking about their thinking.
FORMS & CONDITIONS OF TRANSFER
How do students successfully learn information and transfer what they learn to new situations and tasks? Do rote learning and drill-and-practice play a role in transfer of learning or are there other factors that influence transfer?
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT FORMS AND CONDITIONS OF TRANSFER?
Transfer of learning occurs when students use and apply their prior knowledge and existing competencies in a variety of learning situations and life experiences. Transfer is a very important aspect of learning as it allows students to connect what they know and can do in academic settings and contexts outside the classroom. Transfer is usually manifested when students demonstrate new meanings, insights, associations, and abilities, as well as generalizations from different educational experiences.
There are two types of transfer of learning, including positive transfer and negative transfer. Positive transfer is the case when a previously learned behavior helps a student perform well in a new but similar situation (e.g., knowing French can help a student learn Spanish, another Romance language that uses similar grammatical rules and words with roots from Latin). On the other hand, negative transfer occurs when a previously learned behavior interferes with a student's performance in a new but similar situation (e.g., when elementary school students learn about subject-verb agreement, they learn that a singular noun uses a verb + an s (e.g., the cat purrs) and a plural noun uses a verb without an s (e.g., the cats purr). However, when students use singular subject pronouns such as "I" and "you", they may try to apply the rule related to singular nouns and add an s to a verb (e.g., I or you talks).
According to researchers, positive transfer generally takes place more often than negative transfer. This finding emphasizes the important role played by prior knowledge and skills in students' learning of new information and performance of new tasks.
When is transfer of learning likely to take place?
A student is more likely to experience transfer of learning when he/she:
- Is involved in meaningful learning versus rote-learning (i.e., when new information taught is connected to information already stored in long-term memory)
- Receives in-depth teaching about a few academic concepts versus many concepts
- Has opportunities to apply concepts in a variety of situations and settings
- Participates in a novel situation that resembles a prior situation (e.g., when a French speaker learns to count in Spanish, he/she remembers similar numbers in French such as quatro, cinco, seis and quatre, cinq, six)
- Has to apply general facts versus specific facts in different learning situations
- Uses learning strategies and study habits that previously supported success in new learning situations
- Brings the same positive attitudes and beliefs about learning into new learning situations
- Is immersed in a classroom environment that requires students to make connections across disciplines
Critical Thinking
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The topic of higher order thinking currently draws considerable interest among the public. This is because many parents, teachers, and psychologists have been increasingly criticizing U.S. schools for solely exercising students' lower order thinking and failing to develop their higher order thinking, and in particular, their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Yet, higher order thinking is necessary for success in college and the world of work. Future educators need to be cognizant of what higher order thinking entails if they are to facilitate this type of thinking among students.
WHAT IS HIGHER ORDER THINKING?
Higher order thinking skills (called HOTS) are advanced thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The idea that human cognition includes lower and higher levels of thinking was developed by Benjamin Bloom back in the 1950s. Bloom argued that there are six levels of cognitive behaviors and each level is increasingly more complex than the other. This came to be known as Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.
In Bloom's taxonomy, lower order thinking involves knowledge, comprehension, and application. Higher order thinking involves analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
In the 1990s, Bloom's taxonomy was updated by two former students. Bloom's six levels of cognitive behaviors, which were originally in noun forms, were changed to verb forms as illustrated below:
In the latest version, the verbs describe the following cognitive behaviors:
- Remembering: retrieving and recalling knowledge from long-term memory
- Understanding: constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages via interpretation, classification, inferences, comparisons, and explanations
- Applying: carrying out a procedure
- Analyzing: breaking down information into parts and relating the parts with each other
- Evaluating: making judgments based on criteria and standards
- Creating: putting or organizing elements together to form a whole or pattern
Bloom's taxonomy should be used by educators to develop critical thinking skills, as well as creative thinking skills among their students.
Critical thinking involves logic and deductive and inductive reasoning. It requires students to compare, classify, determine cause and effect, identify patterns and analogies, predict, hypothesize, critique, and evaluate. Creative thinking, on the other hand, involves the creation of new or original ideas or products. It requires students to problem-solve, modify, generate, and create.
REFERENCES
Berk, L. (2018). Development through the lifespan (7th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Ormrod, J. & Jones, B. (2018). Essentials of educational psychology: Big ideas to guide effective teaching (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Santrock, J. (2018). Educational psychology (6th ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill.
Sternberg, R. (2012). Cognitive psychology (6th ed.). Boston: Cengage.
