Okay Seriously, What is Metacognition? (OSWIM)
For the sake of simplicity I will be referring to the assigned texts,
"Apprenticing Adolescents To Reading in Subject Area Classrooms"
and
"Reimagining Our Inexperienced Adolescent Readers: From Struggling, Striving, Marginalized, and Reluctant to Thriving"
as the following acronyms: AATRISAC, ROIARFSSMARTT.
Considering this collection of content as a whole it seems like the primary motivator of this weeks focus is the issue of literacy, or lack thereof. ROIARFSSMARTT first segment references that 26% of eighth graders who took the NAEP did not reach basic levels of literacy. It should also be known that 21% of US adults are illiterate and 54% of US adults read at or below a sixth grade reading level (that is a lot of people).
ROIARFSSMARTT then makes the point that "Most middle and high school students engage very little with sustained reading." and that teachers are incentivized through our testing//funding cycle to avoid slower methods of content delivery (methods involving student engagement with difficult texts and exploratory thinking as examples). So beyond the years where "learning to read" is on the agenda, student illiteracy is viewed a hurdle to be overcome making all other content more accessible as opposed to improving literacy skills. AATRISAC describes this "compensatory teaching" as being engaging in its best form, and soul crushing at its worst (just kidding, I came up with word soul crushing, read page 137, left column, second paragraph for yourself). I do agree with that point, there is a benefit to making content accessible to a group with widely different foundations.
Metacognition was a major topic of this week, occurring in the first two readings as well as getting its own entire reading "What is Metacognition?" What is metacognition is not a simple question but informs the practice of reading apprenticeship fairly well. As I see it, reading apprenticeship is a collaboration between students and teacher where texts are explored with a great emphasis on how are we doing this, why are we doing this, what is that, this is hard, I understand, this is relatable, I don't know that word etc. Or, its a collaborative dissection of the our thinking process while reading. It seems like the process requires vulnerability to some degree. Later in "What is Metacognition?" my thought on vulnerability requirements was reaffirmed when they suggested the benefits of having teachers model metacognition. I think displaying uncertainty in an authoritative position suggests weakness and should be avoided (just kidding). I think making a point of verbalizing your processes to solving a problem (tackling an uncertainty perhaps) promotes student understanding of their own problem solving processes (Is this Metacognition? I think yes).
Additional quote I liked:
(ROIARFSSMARTT) “A critical and often unacknowledged component of adolescents' literacy development involves encouraging them to transform identities they may have con-structed as nonreaders into new identities as more capable readers and learners.”
Yes, a hundred times yes. I think identifying yourself as bad at something does a lot of harm towards the process of improving, or finding any enjoyment at all related to the subject. I see it in reading and writing but also in math. Every subject overlaps in more ways than it does not so limiting yourself to a quarter of the whole picture is lame.
Hey Anika,
ReplyDeleteI like your comment on the idea of "reading to subject-area classrooms" at its worst is soul crushing, because it is. I hate being in a class, or running a class, that just has the teacher talk at the student. Rather than reading at the students modeling our thought processes as "experts" (I put this in quotes because I don't like using a word like expert. It tends to have people think of us as infallible) can be so much more beneficial as the readings suggest.
These readings have encouraged me as a teacher to slow down on the content delivery. My classes are world history classes and we have to take students from prehistory to the ending of the Cold War, which is a lot. However, I am thinking that I do my students a disservice by flying through all of this without ensuring they have the most important skill of all mastered, reading.
As a course we set up scaffolds for them in their readings like guided questions, footnotes, etc. I also model from time to time and think a loud when examining challenging texts, but I don't think I am doing enough. I guess I just have to convince my division head to let me slow down since this is common curriculum!
I would somewhat agree with your last point that subjects are more similar than different. We are all asking students to engage in deep thinking processes, and perform metacognitive tasks. My dream form of education is cohorting students with the same teachers across the core subjects areas. That way we can common plan and create lessons around the same ideas and help build understanding of concepts across all of our subject areas. Instead of the model we have now where students learn drastically different things in all of their classes, making their education feel very disjointed.
Metacognition is such an important aspect of our jobs as educators that in order to be a successful content-specific teacher, we must also teach students how to develop metacognitive skills as well as the content we are to teach. In fact, if we're not showing students how to "think outloud" about our content, they're just memorizing facts but not engaging in the content academically.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, I also really liked the metacognition modeling that was discussed in the "Apprenticing Adolescents" article on page 136 where the teacher modeled how to break down a difficult reading and using the "metacognition toolkit" to help her gleam understanding from the text. As you mentioned Annika, it's incredibly important to show vulnerability to students as it models how to problem-solve when you don't know everything about the text. In my discipline this looks like teaching reading-strategies and problem-solving when words (in Spanish) are unfamiliar.
A related part of the "Reimagining..." article mentions how "examinations and curriculum demands pressure secondary school subject-area teachers to cover content quickly...[and therefore teachers] find it more expeditious to tell students about required content than to organize scaffolded text-based inquiry to foster understanding of of content and discipline-specific literacy." This is a challenge for any content teacher where you're never JUST a teacher of history/geometry/ etc. but also a teacher on how to THINK (which will come easier to some people than others depending on the subject).
Metacognition is definitely an important aspect to our jobs as educators. I at first had no idea what it was until after these readings and it has helped to provide insight into things that I hear or see from others and do research into what I can do as a future educator.
ReplyDeleteFor example, my younger brother and his friends in their 1st year of high school have been memorizing a lot of the content rather than engaging with it in some of the classes they were taking. I noticed this because he would often come to me with questions, mostly about math, of how he is supposed to use what they learned in class to do his homework. They know and have the formulas but when given word problems they don't know how to break it down into a way that makes sense to them or find key words that indicate how they can solve the problem.
As educators we should be incorporating metacognitive skills into our teaching so that we can help students succeed. I know it is one thing to say that than actually do it, especially since I have little to no experience as an educator, but I think this is something as future educators we should keep in mind.
For anyone interested, I have found this article that explains the benefits of metacognition in the classroom and gives some strategies in adding activities that will help with students with developing metacognitive skills: https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/metacognition-in-the-classroom/
While reading Schoenbach et.al., I couldn't help but think "There's not enough time for this". Unfortunately, as you mentioned, current teaching methods and school policies don't support slower content delivery that would allow students to engage in meaningful discussions and practice critical thinking. I mean we're experiencing this in Real Analysis (insert rolling eye emoji)!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, when I reflect on any English class I've had, we would spend 2 or maybe 3 weeks reading and discussing an entire novel. Students were expected to read a certain number of chapters every night and be prepared to answer questions and discuss in class the next day. No one ever read; they just looked up chapter summaries on Spark Notes and winged it in class. If teachers adopted the Reading Apprenticeship model shown in Schoenbach et.al., students could spend time reading these chapters in class with their peers, discussing the difficult passages, and working through the meaning of the text as a class. They'd actually gain the necessary literacy skills overlooked by the need to cover so much in one school year.
Now, if you only have 50 minutes a day and a laundry list of readings to do, this model sounds completely unreasonable. So maybe we need to rethink what is beneficial to students: rushing through as many novels and articles as possible with very little impact on students or significantly reducing the number of readings and focusing on developing their literacy skills.
Hi Annika,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I liked your title of the post because after I read the articles I still sat there confused on what actually is Metacognition. My understanding of it is that it is the process of thinking or reflecting on their thought process and choosing an effective strategy. The article, “What is Metacognition”, explained three categories of metacognition: Metamemory, metacomprehension, problem solving and critical thinking. These categories are different ways of thinking that we use to learn and comprehend a subject. I liked your point where you explained that Metacognition is when you make a point of verbalizing your processes to solving a problem and that promotes the understanding of their own problem solving processes. This explanation is sound because it also applies Metacognition to the classroom setting and how we can use it to help our students learn.
I also liked your quote at the end, (ROIARFSSMARTT) “A critical and often unacknowledged component of adolescents' literacy development involves encouraging them to transform identities they may have con-structed as nonreaders into new identities as more capable readers and learners.” To me this quote explains that adolescents should be encouraged to transform their identities into capable readers and learners to become more confident in their reading and move away from their previous identity of non-readers. This type of positive reinforcement can go a long way and is necessary for students who are learning essential skills such as reading and math.
Hi, I agree with what you said about how it's a collaboration between student and teacher. There definitely needs to be work done on both ends of teacher and student. The teachers should be able to guide but also connect with the students on where they're at in the learning. But the students also have to be in the process of whether they are asking questions, problem-solving, analyzing, etc.. It definitely helps students and teachers to be engaged since the students will have a better time learning and processing the material. I strongly resonate with this since the teachers that I do remember are the ones who engage with the students and put themselves out there with the students in their learning journey. They are the teachers who make an impact on us and help guide us as well as mentor us for our future.
ReplyDeleteThis weeks readings and your post certainly enlightned me, especially with the focus on literacy. It truly is something that i believe is severly undervalued within our day to day lives. Even for myself I dont think I read on a college level despite being a college student. I defintely feel that some schools are a lot more focused on testing and state tests rather than teaching skills and polishing students learning abilities.
ReplyDeleteMetacognition is also such an important thing for us as not only educators but students as well, of course as educators it is our duty to teach in a way that allows students to make connections between the knowledge they have and what they are learning, but also as students I think we have a sort of need to understand how we as individuals learn and create bias's that may influnce the way we think and teach.
Your post this week really helped me understand the readings in a way that stuck with me, as well as keeping me engaged with the post. I found the comment about compensatory teaching to be soul crushing very funny and it definitely was something that kept me engaged and reading. I also liked the additional quote you added at the bottom that you liked, it made this feel more personal as I think a blog should be.
Hey Anika! Your perspective on reading apprenticeship being "a collaboration between students and teacher where texts are explored with a great emphasis on how are we doing this, why are we doing this, etc... a collaborative dissection of the thinking process while reading" was insightful and quite similar to the takeaway I got from this week's readings, as well. What really struck a chord for me was the discussion about how a chemistry teacher included a support tool to the textbook, which was a 2 column reading log. I majored in Chemistry, and throughout my years of studying science, I have never come across a science teacher who has ever introduced a support tool to the primary textbook; the learning process always involved learning the lesson from the textbook and then regurgitating what we learned through practice problems, homework, and finally tests/exams. Failing to connect what we learned to the foundational knowledge of science not only made it very difficult for us to develop a meaningful connection to what we were learning, but it also hindered our ability to critically think about the information that was continuously being dumped onto us.
ReplyDeleteSide note: I enjoyed reading your favorite quote at the end of your blog post! It brings me back to the concept of imagining a better world before pursuing the knowledge/means of bringing about such a world into existence. I feel like too many students enter certain subjects with a defeatist mindset which prevents them from even putting their best foot forward, and it doesn't help that there are so many voices around them telling them that they are either prone to performing well in the humanities or the sciences when that's simply not true (in my opinion).
I appreciate that you started off with the statistics the readings provided. These statistics are counting for adolescents who are in school so one can imagine how many more do not have an understanding or possibility of learning a set of literacy skills. These statistics prove that there should be better approaches to literacy development.
ReplyDeleteAs you mentioned there is more push for teachers to teach to test and have it be less student engageful. These actions result in students being able to identify themselves as a “bad reader”, student disengagement, and limit their skill set. Greenleaf and Hinchmam also stated that “ U.S. educators and policymakers seem wedded to a “fix-it” remedial mentality.” After interventions are made, they call efforts “inadequate.” Instead of applying interventions for a set time, we should push more of this to work in all areas(subjects) of school consistently. If only history and english classes focus on different reading processes, then students will only be able to apply these techniques in written “English” papers. Whereas when it comes to graphs or labs, students may find it difficult to apply these techniques because they lack practice.
Upon reading I thought of the different types of media that was available to me growing up but also how hard or easy they were accessible. For example books are arguably harder to obtain rather than a mobile device that's connected to the internet. In my household, growing up, I had lots of books; however, the action of grabbing a book and turning the pages is far harder than turning on an electronic device, finding a video, and playing a game.
ReplyDeleteAnother issue in today's world that may affect literacy rates is social media and how it's specifically designed to keep you engaged for as long as possible... shoving ads down your throats and new information... I can't quite remember the exact words, but I remember watching a video on how brains have been chemically addicted to new information, and people now doom scroll on TikTok. I myself struggled with this for a while and eventually deleted TikTok.
I found your post to be very interesting because it really puts into perspective how important and critical it is for metacognition to be occurring. I also liked that you started with some stats about literacy but didn't use it purely without any context. Many education related articles like to put up negative stats with very little else in terms of conversation. It's dehumanizing and frankly inappropriate, but I felt like you gave this conversation lots of grace and thought.
ReplyDeleteIt is so important to understand metacognition as educators for the same reasons we ought to know our own fields of interest. Without understanding it ourselves we simply can't expect our students to gain a mastery of it and/or use it to the best of their abilities.
As a future educator my hope is that I can best deliver content to my students with proper grace and intention without leaving them behind in terms of literacy skills and understanding.
A
I agree with everything you wrote and I think you made some very important realizations.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you addressed the misconception that metacognition might be confused with vulnerability and a teacher's forfeiture of authority in a classroom. Metacognition is simply a thought process which allows students and teachers to grow and build from whatever ideas they might already have. It's a continuous process of thinking in different directions and making curriculum relevant to a student's own experience. Some teachers might be afraid to approach their job this way and might choose the safe route of giving work and looking only for correct answers, relying only on a student's automatic thought process to measure progress. Some administrators may also view literacy skills in the context of a quota that has to be reached.
Metacognition can be a dense subject and I liked how you articulated it in terms of actual questions that a student could ask themself. It's a teacher's job to allow a student to form their own agency. I witness a lack of metacognition with my two younger brothers who kind of just go through the motions of basic rote procedures with their math homework. I bet they would enjoy it more if they were shown a better way to connect with it (they're only in 5th grade, so hopefully it's not too late).