Think at GC: The Metacognition Project

A reflective journal is used as a technique of self-reflection in the learning process. By integrating the process of metacognition, a reflective journal guideline was developed to knowing students' metacognition growth in writing. The reflective journal guidelines are designed in the form of self-questioning to make it easier for students to express their metacognition processes during their writing assignments. The metacognition process consists of three, namely awareness, evaluation, and regulation. The reflective journal guidelines that were compiled was given to 50 students. Before writing a reflective journal, students are asked to work on the task of writing explanatory texts. Students monitor the metacognition growth of while writing the explanatory text using reflective journal guidelines. Research findings show that reflective journal guidelines can be used to monitor the growth of students' metacognition in writing. Both students who are used to writing and who are not accustomed to writing can express their writing experience by answering questions in the reflective journal guidelines. This finding also shows that teachers must always encourage students to always write reflective journals in order to monitor metacognition growth in writing, ranging from raising awareness about knowledge and task completion efforts, monitoring the quality of the results obtained, and fostering the habit of planning, setting goals, and apply certain strategies in completing tasks. Students who are used to writing reflective journals in the learning process will be able to develop their writing skills and will become independent learners. .

This article examines metacognitive-based teaching strategies and provides preliminary evidence about their effectiveness in the political science classroom. In a 2013 Fall semester Introduction to Political Science course, three metacognitive-based teaching strategies were designed and implemented for improving student learning through greater self-regulation and awareness. This article compares the student learning outcomes to a previous version of the course and also assesses student learning over the semester, including a pre- and post-assessment of course-based knowledge. By assessing changes in student learning, the article investigates, identifies and isolates specific and transferable classroom interventions for improving student learning and proposes using metacognitive-based teaching strategies in a political science classroom..

Laboratory practicals engage students in complex thinking to build their scientific knowledge and understanding. Surprisingly few studies connect the development of students' cognitive and metacognitive skills for learning in the laboratory practical with foundational skills for researching. Librarians strive to establish teaching partnerships with academics to contextualise research skills within curriculum content. However, pedagogical models to make research skills explicit and guide library-faculty collaborations are lacking. This study explores the Research Skill Development (RSD) framework (Willison & O'Regan 2006/ 2018; see the first article in this issue) to extrapolate students' research skills in a first-year biology practical unit. A qualitative research design was applied to identify research skills in the unit's laboratory manual and in descriptive observations of students in five laboratory practicals. Results show students engaged in the research skills articulated by the RSD, yet these skills were implied rather than explicitly taught. Implications suggest that fundamental research skills which enable student preparedness for research can be overlooked in practical curricula. Research skills remaining unrecognised impacts learning and teaching, including the contribution librarians could make in this context. Findings demonstrated that the RSD is a useful theoretical construct and a priori framework to make research skills visible to educators..

This paper describes the impact of a learning strategies intervention conducted in first-year seminar courses that, 1) disaggregated components of academic skills into meaningful components for first-year students, 2) taught students academic skills within an authentic context, and 3) scaled-up the intervention for implementation at a programmatic level. This work is grounded in research on metacognition, self-regulation, and motivation, as well as literature on the academic transition to college. Results reinforced earlier findings indicating significant improved use of metacognitive learning strategies, even when the intervention was expanded to include multiple instructors in multiple course sections. Further research is needed to determine the precise factors precipitating improvement when the project was brought to scale..

Often, students entering a first-year Spanish language course lack knowledge concerning how to use metacognition to their own benefit. It is also common that they do not understand the reason why they are being taught in the way that they are (i.e., immersion in the target language). In this study, an experimental group of 49 first-year Spanish students received lessons in English at the beginning of the semester dealing with language acquisition, foreign-language teaching methodology, and metacognitive awareness. During this time the students also discussed the meaning of deep culture and related past experiences concerning their own language-learning processes..

This article seeks to provide some modest insights into the pedagogy of higher-order thinking and metacognition and to share the use of color-coded drafts as a best practice in service of both higherorder thinking and metacognition. This article will begin with a brief theoretical exploration of thinking and of thinking about thinking--the latter both in the sense of thinking more deeply about what one is learning/has been thinking about in the course (i.e. higher-order thinking) and in the sense of thinking about one's thinking process (i.e. metacognition). Using concepts borrowed from philosopher Immanuel Kant and literary theorist Kenneth Burke, I wish to suggest that any sort of thinking about thinking, whether it be higher-order thinking about course material or metacognition about one's learning, requires that one framework of thought be brought to bear upon the first framework of thought. This perspective will in turn illuminate how the use of color-coded drafts (in the first-year core-education classroom, at least) provides an opportunity for both higher-order thinking and metacognition. The overall conclusion is that, in the case of color-coded drafts, the act of superimposition, rather than the use of color per se, triggers higher-order thinking and metacognition...

Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) is an approach that helps the learners to regulate their cognition and manage their learning process. SRL is a predominant requisite for the learners to systematize their learning process and to evolve as autonomous learners, enabling them to cope with the present education system and the future workplace. SRL is effectuated through the enhancement of learners' metacognition. Metacognition enables the learners to be conscious of their own thought process in the process of learning. Besides, it involves the learners to observe and evaluate their own thinking. Accordingly, the metacognitive strategies-planning, organizing, monitoring and evaluating-provide awareness to the learners and help in their learning progress. This paper focuses on the efficacy of these strategies to promote SRL, as it would improve the learners' introspection on their learning process. Further, the paper explores SRL to regulate the learners' progress and to enhance their reflective practice in the process of learning. Moreover, SRL is effectuated by guiding the learners to monitor and assess their performance in order to achieve their goal. The SRL generates an optimistic change in the learners' responsibility towards learning and endows them with selfcontrol over their learning process. Eventually, it leads them towards Self- Directed Learning (SDL) and enables them to function as autonomous learners..

Metacognition involves two basic behaviors. First, the learner possesses knowledge pertinent to progressing toward the learning task. This knowledge can be assessed by having the learner talk about his or her mental processes when learning. Second, the learner knows the nature of the learning task and what is required to learn or understand the materials being read or studied. The learner may employ the following skills: checking, planning, selecting and monitoring, self-questioning, introspection, and monitoring or interpreting ongoing experiences. Comprehension monitoring is an important aspect of metacognition. Teachers should demonstrate comprehension monitoring processes to their students. R. L. Hillerich (1990) believes that comprehension monitoring is taking place when the reader begins to evaluate what's being read in terms of "Does it make sense?" or when the reader rereads or checks back to determine if he or she has misread a word or the author's intended message. The teacher may "think out loud," thereby providing a model of how one monitors, questions, and recalls what is to be learned. This modeling consists of the teacher's raising questions or problems, then thinking out loud before the class to demonstrate how the problem is resolved or how more thorough comprehension occurs..

Orientation: Research on cultural intelligence (CQ) is increasingly used to evaluate, explain and predict the cross-cultural efficacy of management behaviour in everyday cross-cultural interactions. However, there is limited evidence in cross-cultural coaching of the use of a CQ-based approach incorporating metacognition and experiential learning theory (ELT). Research purpose: This article explored the theoretical linkages, benefits and directions of CQ for enhancing cross-cultural coaching. Motivation for the study: Exploration of theoretical perspectives of CQ for application in cross-cultural coaching. Research design, approach and method: A critical interpretative synthesis research methodology was employed to identify and study key concepts. The methodology is sensitive to the emergence of meaning in a diverse body of literature from adjacent disciplines. Main findings: This research suggests four findings motivating a CQ-based approach for cross-cultural coaching: firstly, the recognition of the use of metacognitive strategies in (cross-cultural) coaching; secondly, the usefulness of metacognition to cross-cultural coaching for grasping and transforming cultural experience and insights into culturally appropriate behavior; thirdly, an understanding of the significance of suitability and predisposition of certain learning styles to cross-cultural learning effectiveness and lastly, acknowledging the importance of a heightened focus on the experiential learning process within the cross-cultural coaching engagement. Practical and managerial implications: Key concepts and insights from research on CQ have application in cross-cultural coaching in pursuit of the transformation of cultural awareness and insight into culturally appropriate behavior. Contribution/value-add: This research motivates the use of a CQ-based approach incorporating metacognition and ELT to cross-cultural coaching..

Habits are critical for supporting (or hindering) long-term goal attainment, including outcomes related to student learning and well-being. Building good habits can make beneficial behaviors (studying, exercise, sleep, etc.) the default choice, bypassing the need for conscious deliberation or willpower and protecting against temptations. Yet educational research and practice tends to overlook the role of habits in student self-regulation, focusing instead on the role of motivation and metacognition in actively driving behavior. Habit theory may help explain ostensible failures of motivation or self-control in terms of contextual factors that perpetuate poor habits. Further, habit-based interventions may support durable changes in students' recurring behaviors by disrupting cues that activate bad habits and creating supportive and stable contexts for beneficial ones. In turn, the unique features of educational settings provide a new area in which to test and adapt existing habit models..

The article discusses the lacking of the resources of larger institutions of higher education, open-access institutions are experiencing rapid growth and have made strong contributions to the increasing numbers of degrees being granted nationally. It mentions that Open-access colleges and universities have become leaders in educating students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and are helping to break the vicious cycle of limited educational access..

The authors focus on the significance of the counselor's cultural contexts in effective career interventions vis-à-vis the incorporation of multicultural metacognition. They briefly summarize and critique extant career counseling models for racial/ethnic minority clients and then describe an expanded model for career counseling that incorporates metacognition processes for addressing counselor-related cultural factors..

This work develops the complex character, the paradigmatic interactions and structural conditionings between the capacity of evaluation and self-evaluation when forming didactic competence, through the analysis of the dimensions, steps of initial forming of these capacities at future trainers. Here, there are presented the conclusions of a study made by implementation of a program of forming evaluation and self-evaluation capacity, having as target-group, students of the Education Science and Social Work Faculty within our University and institutors. It was mainly intended through this program to form a positive attitude towards evaluation and the development of self-evaluation competences through meta-cognition..

The effectiveness of undergraduate career courses has been demonstrated for multiple variables, including career certainty, maturity, decision‐making skills, and reduction of dysfunctional career thoughts. Although such studies used the career course as an intervention, most failed to include a comparison course, nor were grounded in career theory. This study used a comparison group of 152 undergraduates enrolled in career development courses and 50 students enrolled in undergraduate human relations courses. Pre‐ and posttest comparisons indicated that the career course yielded significant improvements in career decision state, cognitive information processing (CIP) skills, career decision‐making stage, knowledge of next steps, and anxiety about current career concern, but the human relations course did not. The CIP‐based career course is supported as a valid career intervention, and individuals may benefit from targeted interventions depending on their CASVE cycle position. Future research might compare different career theory–based or atheoretical career courses on career development outcomes..

Metacognition is thinking about thinking, or planning, monitoring, and assessing personal awareness and understanding cognition and thought processes. Teaching Bloom's revised taxonomy can help students progress from lower- to higher-levels of thinking in the learning process. Teachers need to model how they think to help students develop metacognitive skills and abilities, including how to study to learn. These enables students to reflect upon how they think and build their self-efficacy in metacognitive knowledge and application. Numerous metacognitive strategies, including self-regulated learning strategies, and strategies transcending content domains, such as metacognitive reading approaches and self-questioning for learning are described..

If we want that our students to practice a qualitative learning, there is a need for a change of optic in the educational process. This change involves shifting the emphasis placed on the activity of the teacher, to the activity of students, who must assume the responsibility of their own learning. In order to make such a change, a fundamental premise is represented by the development of metacognition and related competencies of the students. The metacognition is the knowledge we have about our own cognitive processes, but also its regulation and optimization. Forming and developing of such superior students' capacity can achieve significant benefits in relation to the learning they practice: identifying strengths and vulnerabilities of cognitive style and learning style, assuming learning tasks, optimal selection of the learning strategies, according to proposed / self-proposed goals, adjusting their own learning, correct self-evaluation etc. The present study aims to search the students' opinions related to the qualitative academic learning and on the importance of the development of metacognition within it, identifying and practicing also appropriate strategies in which students can develop their metacognitive competences, as a premise of a qualitive academic learning. The target group of the research is represented by the students enrolled in the Psycho-pedagogical Training Program, the research method being a questionnaire-based survey, supplemented by a focus group..

Academically underprepared postsecondary students make up a large proportion of college campuses. Recent estimates indicate that up to 70 percent of incoming students at two-year community colleges and up to 40 percent of incoming students at four-year colleges enroll in developmental courses. These courses, sometimes also referred to as remedial, basic skills, college preparatory, or pre-curriculum, typically do not offer credit toward an associate or bachelor’s degree. They largely enroll students who have completed high school (earning a traditional diploma or GED) and are offered across an array of subject areas (e.g., reading, writing, mathematics) to prepare students to progress to the demands of postsecondary coursework..

As key components of self-regulated learning, metacognition and goal orientation have been tied to improvements in academic achievement. Some research supports a bidirectional relationship between metacognition and goal orientation in which they promote each other as well as learning outcomes. We created a learning philosophy assignment (LP) to encourage students’ consideration of their learning strategies and goals resulting in a record of students’ metacognition. Research suggests that low-achieving students may have different metacognitive capabilities and learning goals and as such may be differentially impacted by the assignment. This paper considers the content of the LPs. Students were split into achievement quartiles to explore any patterns in metacognition or learning goals distinct to achievement level. Our content analysis confirms that the LP was successful in documenting metacognition and learning goals in all students. There were some differences related to achievement level..

The Freshman Myth has been used to demonstrate that students frequently enter tertiary education with unrealistically high expectations of various aspects of university life. This research explored the Freshman Myth in relation to assessment and predicted it would be reversed for academic issues, with students’ having lower and more negative expectations of assessment than those of their tutors, as communicated via module descriptors, the initial source of information for incoming students. Data were gathered from students during their first class of the module before assessment had been discussed, and through the information and expectations communicated via the module descriptor. Results suggested that student expectations were clearer and more positive than those expressed by their lecturers in many aspects of assessment, including timing and frequency, and range of methods. Module descriptors provided little indication of the standards expected of students or insight into areas in which students were less clear, such as the role of assessment in learning. Information currently available through module descriptors does little to progress student perception of assessment beyond that experienced at secondary level or to prepare students for the academic rigour of their first module in higher education..

In French universities, only one out of two students is successful in his/her first year. The drastic changes in the organization of work and the greater emphasis put on self-regulated learning (relying on metacognition) can largely explain these low success rates. In this regard, techniques have been developed to help students improve monitoring their learning activities. Our goal is to test a general and adjustable intervention on metacognition that could be used with ease by any teacher in any course. In order to achieve this, we adapted and simplified a method tested in previous research. We hypothesized that students benefiting from this intervention (over the entire semester or starting only halfway through) would get better grades than students in standard teaching conditions. The results of this study showed positive effects on students' performance. Hence, this approach would benefit undergraduates if generalized, especially when the time frame and content of courses are somewhat rigid and non-negotiable. Moreover, it is easy to implement in university classes for any course. Yet, this work does not rule out any other intervention and could be complemented by techniques focused on more global aspects of metacognition..

Metacognitive strategies, such as those associated with a growth mindset, reflection, sense making, or developing accurate self-assessments, are integral to student success in postsecondary education. We present a three-pronged approach to developing metacognitive strategies in two targeted populations in STEM—deaf/hard-of-hearing students and (separately) first-generation students—who share similar obstacles in their transition to college. Project IMPRESS (Integrating Metacognitive Practice and Research to Ensure Student Success) seeks to embed metacognitive practice in authentic scientific and education practice. In a 2-week summer experience, students engage in iterative experimentation and model-building around climate change. During the academic year, coursework introduces students to metacognitive topics that students then apply to their concurrent STEM courses. The third component places students in leadership positions within the classroom as a learning assistant and/or summer undergraduate student leader. IMPRESS has increased the 2-, 3- and 4-year retention of these at-risk students, with additional social and community benefits as well..

The article focuses on Developmental Education DE programing to engage new college students in metacognition as a tool to engage in critical thinking. Topics discussed include positive impact on learning and academic that can be achieved with use of metacognition, positive impact of training in metacognitive knowledge and regulation on students with learning disabilities and significant role of metacognition in developing a type of learning that involves critical thinking..

Albert Einstein famously said, "I never teach my students. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn." At the Miles College Metacognition Lab, we follow a similar philosophy. In the Metacognition Lab, we teach our students to think about how they are thinking. We have created a system of student interactions that monitors and assesses student progress and concurrently teaches our students how to monitor and assess their own progress. To this end, we have four main focuses: 1) Creating meaningful relationships of trust based on honest communication 2) Emphasizing the importance of short term and long term goals 3) Teaching students the Study Cycle and how to do Intense Study Sessions and 3) Creating Action Plans that outline simple steps for the students to follow on their own..

Knowledge monitoring is an important metacognitive process, which can help students improve study habits and thereby increase academic performance. Which is more useful in predicting test performance: knowing what you know, or knowing what you do not know? Two distinct constructs of knowledge monitoring calibration, sensitivity and specificity, were used along with the more traditional Goodman-Kruskal gamma correlation to predict performance on tests in an undergraduate educational psychology course. The gamma correlation provides a measure of how good one is at judging both items one knows and items one does not. Measures of sensitivity and specificity distinguish between the two. Students in an undergraduate educational psychology course completed a 50-word knowledge monitoring assessment to measure sensitivity, specificity, and gamma. These measures were then correlated with test and final exam scores in the course. It was found that sensitivity, a measure of correctly identifying known items, was the most useful in predicting overall test scores as well as final exam scores. Specificity, on the other hand, had no significant impact on exam performance. Results suggest that sensitivity and specificity may be more meaningful measures of knowledge monitoring calibration when it comes to predicting academic achievement, as well as being better adapted for missing values in any one cell of the data. Further research is recommended to determine in what other situations the measures of sensitivity and specificity may be useful. Findings presented in this study can also be used to help guide attempts to improve student metacognition and strategies..

This paper attempts to compare student's academic performance in mathematics on the basis of their level of meta-cognitive awareness. Moreover, student's IQ and SES are known to influence their academic performance in mathematics. Hence student's IQ and SES are included as control variables whose effect from academic performance in mathematics was removed statistically and then it was compared on the basis of the level of student's meta-cognitive awareness was studied. The participants of the study included 703 students of standard 8th from S.S.C board schools. Meta-cognitive awareness was measured using Meta-cognitive awareness Inventory by Schraw and Dennison (1994). Student's final examination marks in mathematics subject were included as academic performance scores of mathematics. Results indicated that there is a significant difference in academic performance of students by metacognitive awareness. There is significant difference in academic performance of students by meta-cognitive awareness when effects of SES and IQ have been removed statistically. This implies that the difference in student's academic performance in mathematics on the basis of their meta-cognitive awareness not arose on account of their IQ and SES rather than their meta-cognitive awareness..

This study proposed and tested a comprehensive, chained mediation model of university students' academic performance. The hypothesized model included adaptive-positive and maladaptive-negative submodels. The structures and processes in the adaptive-positive submodel were hypothesized to facilitate students' academic performance, whereas the structures and processes in the maladaptive-negative submodel were hypothesized to undermine it. A sample of 373 university students completed a set of questionnaires measuring their approaches to studying, positive and negative affect, evaluation anxiety, use of creative cognition, motivational orientations, and adaptive and maladaptive metacognitions. Participants' end-of-semester and prior semester academic performance was retrieved from the university registry. A structural equation model explained 90 % of the variance in students' future academic performance, supported all but one hypothesized intermediate paths, and revealed that only positive affect in studying and prior academic performance predict directly future academic performance. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are outlined..

·What is the policy background to current interest in retention and student success?·What causes students to leave institutions without completing their programmes? ·How can theory and research help institutions to encourage student success?Retention and completion rates are important measures of the performance of institutions and higher education systems. Understanding the causes of student non-completion is vital for an institution seeking to increase the chances of student success.The early chapters of this book discuss retention and student success from a public policy perspective. The later chapters concentrate on theory and research evidence, and on how these can inform institutional practices designed to enhance retention and success (particularly where students are enrolled from disadvantaged backgrounds). This book draws upon international experience, particularly from the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and the United States.Retention and Student Success in Higher Education is essential reading for lecturers, support staff, and senior managers in higher education institutions, and for those with a wider policy interest in these matters..