Teaching and Assessing Discipline-Independent and Discipline-Specific Metacognitive Strategies

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Teaching and Assessing Discipline-Independent and
Discipline-Specific Metacognitive Strategies

• Laura Wenk
• Assistant Professor of Cognition and Education
• Hampshire College

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Goals of this talk

• Examples of learning challenges and metacognitive
  strategies
• Discipline-independent examples
• Discipline-specific examples
• Teaching example for each
• Assessment

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Discipline-independent examples

• Intention (goal setting)
• Reading comprehension (Reciprocal Teaching, PQ4R)
• Writing to transform ideas (rather than knowledge
  telling) e.g.
• Building explanation
• Building argument
• Genre
• Checking for confirmation bias and pre-mature
  closure

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Discipline-specific examples

• Scientific inquiry, including
• Explanatory reasoning in science
• Theories, models, hypotheses
• Thinking with them
• Empirical confirmation
• Interpreting evidence to distinguish among
  knowledge claims
• Research design
• The helix of inquiry
• Where from where to?
• Primary research literature skills
• Reading and understanding
• Writing about

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My courses this semester

• CS 122T Inquiring Minds Find out what other
  students think and do (social research and
  psychology)
• Understand social research
• Use primary research literature
• Conduct a study, manage and analyze data, write
  it up
• CS 208 How People Learn Introduction to
  cognition and education
• Write an argument using the literature (and own
  research data)

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Why use primary research literature?

• Engages students schemas about
• What makes for a well-designed study
• What qualifies as evidence
• Distinction between data and interpretation
• How data are interpreted
• Epistemological change
• Theory-based explanations are inherently
  uncertain
• Results hinge on the details of the research
  process
• Preparation for students own research

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Challenges to using primary literature

• Students cant find it/evaluate it
• Arent interested in it (at first)
• Cant understand it
• New genre, vocabulary, assumptions, etc.
• Difficult to draw the larger lessons from it
• Its about more than just understanding this study

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Some ideas to meet the challenges

• Going slowly
• Breaking primary literature skills into
  components
• Metacognitive explicitness
• Rubric
• Using the project to maintain motivation

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Questions assigned with a research article

1. What question is addressed? Explain the relevant
   past research and ideas that led to it
2. What hypothesis was investigated? Explain how it
   is related to the research question you discussed
   in 1 above.
3. How was the study set up? Explain why it was set
   up this way.
4. What data were collected? Explain why the
   authors chose these particular data to collect.

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Questions assigned with a research article

• What were the results?
• Explain how well the results do (or do not)
  support the hypothesis.
• Explain any alternative explanations for the
  findings
• What further research does this study suggest?
  Explain why it should be conducted.

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In-class activity

• Students compare answers in expert groups by
  question
• Groups present best responses
• All discuss what makes for strong answers, what
  is appropriate level of detail
• Meta-conceptual conversations on the nature of
  science, design issues, underlying assumptions,
  interpretation, etc.

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Students receive feedback via rubric
Question Articulate and explain conceptual issues (well elaborated) Articulate conceptual issues (no elaboration) Miss important conceptual issues and/or confused about the science
1 through 8
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Subsequent assignments

• Additional common articles
• Answer questions
• Student self-assesses with rubric
• I assess with rubric
• We compare assessments
• Multiple opportunities for modeling and practice
  with feedback

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(No Transcript)
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Study Results - 100 Level Natural Science Classes
N42 pre-post matched pairs
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First year students can

• Read primary research
• Improve understanding of research design
• Improve understanding of data interpretation
• Improve in distinction between data and
  interpretation

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My courses this semester

• CS 122T Inquiring Minds Find out what other
  students think and do (social research and
  psychology)
• Understand social research
• Use primary research literature
• Conduct a study and write it up
• CS 208 How People Learn Introduction to
  cognition and education
• Write an argument using the literature (and own
  research data)

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Expectations for student writing

• Hampshire courses are writing intensive
• All students complete a senior thesis (Division
  III)
• Most course projects and the Div III are on
  negotiated topics
• Often requires interdisciplinary arguments

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Some challenges to writing an argument

• Students dont know what an argument is
• Why do we have to argue -)
• Early college students writing tends to be
  descriptive rather than analytical
• It lacks transitions
• It lacks explanation of why they are citing
  someone
• It ignores complexity
• The main point is often reached in the concluding
  paragraph

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Some challenges to writing an argument

• Students fear redundancy
• I already wrote what they found
• Students dont feel qualified to have an opinion
• Students strategies support descriptive writing

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Strategies students tend to use

• Reading articles/chapters and outlining them
• Independent judgments about importance of each
  fact or idea
• Not transformative
• Reading everything before writing
• Sitting down to write, going back to things they
  had read before, and extracting the part they
  thought was interesting
• Stringing ideas together in an order suggested by
  an outline of topics
• Leaving little time for revision

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Some strategies to meet the challenge

• Write AS you read (micro-writing)
• About specific ideas as they occur to you
• Use your own words
• Include important details (elaboration)
• Do a number of these have an epiphany
• Write across the shorter pieces (macro-writing)
• Read out loud (maybe to a friend)
• Stop when you find you need to explain
  something/why it was there and write that
  explanation down
• Hand in for feedback
• Keep revising with feedback (peer and professor)

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Assignments to support new strategies

• Critical response papers (articles I assign)
• Develop a thesis
• Engage with the article and details of the points
  made (of interest)
• Consider questions raised by the reading
• Portfolio of response papers
• Periodically engage in
• Selection of best piece
• Assessing its strengths and weaknesses
• Revising

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Assignments to support new strategies

• Receive feedback from me (on portfolio and
  self-assessment)
• For final paper
• Students must write critical response papers for
  5 articles they find and select on their topic

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No study yet - but

• Im happier with the writing
• They know what I mean when I ask for elaboration
  or transitions, etc.
• Seem more able to make connections across articles

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Assessment - Both examples

• Formative feedback
• Explicit criteria (discussed in class/rubric)
• Timely feedback - adjust
• Both teacher and self-assessment (helps students
  internalize criteria)
• Use same criteria on multiple assignments
• Use the same criteria to judge their projects
• Success on project requires use of target skills