Metacognition: The Ability to Think About Your Thoughts With the Aim of Improving Learning In my reading of articles about brain based education, I kept coming across articles about metacognition. I just returned from the AVID Summer Institute and teaching metacognition was one of the main focuses of my strand, “The Art of Inquiry”.
Teaching students to “drive their brains” with the goal of developing the ability to think about their thoughts with the aim of improving learning will have benefits for them both in and out of the classroom. Metacognition can be learned when it’s explicitly taught and practiced across content areas and social contexts. Teachers can model how they use higher order thinking strategies aloud as well as recognizing when they have made a mistake and use it as a teachable moment to show that everyone makes mistakes and that mistakes are best seen as opportunities to learn and improve. Students who are excited about steering toward learning success are more likely to become independent thinkers who are more aware of their independent progress along their learning path. This leads to students being more conscious and reflective about their learning.
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Synthesizing Paradigm Shifts - EDU 701 This week with the focus on creativity and learning, I am beginning to recognize how much synthesizing I have ahead to put these ideas together in a meaningful way in which I can hold on to it in a way that sticks as Howard Gardner explained in regards to the Five Minds of the Future.
From Laura Master’s talk about how the brain learns, I take away that neuroscience is how learning truly happens. As educators, we need to provide opportunities for students to process info rather than delivering it to them in hopes that they will remember it. Project Based Learning is a very effective way to accomplish this along with 21st century skills focusing on concepts, not coverage. I loved her slide that read, “Anything is possible, possibilities are endless.” It is critical that we prepare our students to go out into the world with brains structured to process information. From John Seely Brown’s talk about the New Culture of Learning I take away the importance of curiosity and how in today’s world, as he stated, “you’re screwed” if you don’t have curiosity because we live in a world that is in constant flux. I found it very interesting that one of the greatest predictors of a successful college student is the ability to join or form study groups. The example of the cohort of surfers and their willingness to fail repeatedly in order to learn something new was inspiring as was their approach using digital media and working together for the success of all. From Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future talk, it became clear that no longer can one stop learning and rest on their laurels. These days one must be an expert in their field otherwise they will work for an expert. The two minds I found most interesting were the synthesizing mind and the creative mind. Taking new information and putting it together with other information in a way that makes sense and in a way that can be held on to is critical. For the creative mind, one must have irreverence along with a tough, challenging temperament and be willing to try and try again, in other words, have a restless, challenging spirit. From Sir Ken Robinson’s humorous talk, I take away intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinct. I loved the example of the student who had difficulty sitting still in class and her physician observed her movement to music and suggested a school for dancers where she was thrilled to find a whole room filled with learners just like her with other learners who needed to move to think. The idea of celebrating a child’s whole being and recognizing the gift of imagination is so important. In Dan Pink’s talk about the Puzzle of Motivation he discusses the power of incentives, both extrinsic and intrinsic. In several studies it was found that rewarding people to do better work almost always has the opposite effect because it dulls thinking and blocks creativity. There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business, and I think education, does. Rewards tend to narrow the focus of real problems where the solution is often found on the periphery. The higher the incentive, the worse the performance became. Too many organizations are making decisions based on assumptions that are outdated, unexamined and based on folklore. Instead, focusing on developing and recognizing intrinsic motivation is key to success. Intrinsic motivation is developed when we like something, we find it interesting and it matters to us. EDUC 701 As I finished reading The Flat World and Education (Darling-Hammond) I was left feeling both discouraged by the state of education and our country falling behind others but also encouraged that educational reform and change is definitely possible as proven by other countries.
Of the 5 policy prescriptions above and outlined in the closing chapter, I feel like I can personally make the most difference in regards to #5. I feel fortunate to work at a school where all teachers are willing to roll up their sleeves, learn and implement new ideas and strategies and work together in PLCs, professional development days, and in grade span teams to share and seek suggestions for improvement. I believe we are all better educators as a result of the collaboration we make time for and our students definitely benefit from it. Educator, Liz McDonald’s experience with district pacing guides really resonated with me. I believe that most educators make a good faith effort to implement the district’s curriculum and comply with mandated reforms while at the same time implementing additional resources to strengthen instruction. The pacing guides present continual challenges for teachers who need to make the decision to stay on pace for sake of scheduled assessments with the risk of losing students along the way. Like McDonald, when I have opted to stay on the prescribed pace, there has consistently been a rise in unwanted student behaviors as a result. In an ideal world, teachers would be provided with curriculum guidance and support for the best sequence of topics or central ideas to be introduced but would allow for students to spend more time studying central ideas with inquiry based methods and opportunities to apply, analyze and integrate new learning in real world applications. This is something I can make sure I do in my own classroom which is where I feel I have the most opportunity to make positive changes. |
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April 2017
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