Metacognition in Practice
Metacognition in Practice (Veteran Voices)
Transcript
Three things I know to be true about learning.
First, learning is a process that is meant to take time and effort. It's not supposed to feel easy, and we should seek out strategies that are effortful when trying to learn new ideas.
Second, we learn by making connections to what we already know. Regular self assessment, and where we are in the learning process, and how new material connects to what we've learned in the past, makes a difference in our ability to learn deeply and efficiently.
Third, our mindsets about learning new material impact our outcomes. When we look for ceilings, we hit them. When we focus on incremental improvements, we continue moving forward. Each of these ideas can be unpacked into specific strategies and takeaways. Concrete action items that we should add to our to do lists as learners.
Taken together, they set us up to approach learning, not just as a cognitive process, but as a metacognitive process. To not just think, but to think about how we think. To not just learn, but to try to understand how we learn, and how we can learn more effectively. Why? Because as one of my colleagues likes to say, we are not study robots. Every person who steps into the classroom steps in with a life experience that shapes if and how he or she will engage. Our beliefs about whether we belong in the classroom, whether our abilities will grow with effort, whether we can ultimately succeed and whether the work we're doing is valuable to us. They directly impact how well we'll do, because they change the ways we approach the material and they shape whether we give our brains the chance to go through these cognitive processes that they need in order to learn.
Understanding that learning is a process that takes time and effort helps us to reframe the questions we ask when approaching challenging new material. Side stepping the very natural question that we're taught as kids of can I do this, to focus instead on the more helpful questions of what will it take to do this and what does success mean for me in this context? Understanding that we learn by making connections helps us understand the importance of self assessment in learning. Thinking not only of where we want to end up, but also, and sometimes more so, where we're starting from, and what our trajectory looks like. Last but not least, understanding how our mindsets prime us to react in certain ways to certain kinds of feedback, helps us to anticipate and account for those reactions. To succeed, focus not on the fact of success, but on the work that we put in.
And when we struggle, to focus not on the failure, but on what to do next, and where to turn for help. Self assessment is important in testing our comprehension. But it's not only assessment of what we know and what we've learned that's useful. Asking ourselves questions regularly about how we're learning, how we're feeling, and how we can work with our very human reactions in a learning process sets us up for the best possible chance of success. We're humans, with human brains, and the better we understand our brains and how they work, the more we'll be able to achieve.
First, learning is a process that is meant to take time and effort. It's not supposed to feel easy, and we should seek out strategies that are effortful when trying to learn new ideas.
Second, we learn by making connections to what we already know. Regular self assessment, and where we are in the learning process, and how new material connects to what we've learned in the past, makes a difference in our ability to learn deeply and efficiently.
Third, our mindsets about learning new material impact our outcomes. When we look for ceilings, we hit them. When we focus on incremental improvements, we continue moving forward. Each of these ideas can be unpacked into specific strategies and takeaways. Concrete action items that we should add to our to do lists as learners.
Taken together, they set us up to approach learning, not just as a cognitive process, but as a metacognitive process. To not just think, but to think about how we think. To not just learn, but to try to understand how we learn, and how we can learn more effectively. Why? Because as one of my colleagues likes to say, we are not study robots. Every person who steps into the classroom steps in with a life experience that shapes if and how he or she will engage. Our beliefs about whether we belong in the classroom, whether our abilities will grow with effort, whether we can ultimately succeed and whether the work we're doing is valuable to us. They directly impact how well we'll do, because they change the ways we approach the material and they shape whether we give our brains the chance to go through these cognitive processes that they need in order to learn.
Understanding that learning is a process that takes time and effort helps us to reframe the questions we ask when approaching challenging new material. Side stepping the very natural question that we're taught as kids of can I do this, to focus instead on the more helpful questions of what will it take to do this and what does success mean for me in this context? Understanding that we learn by making connections helps us understand the importance of self assessment in learning. Thinking not only of where we want to end up, but also, and sometimes more so, where we're starting from, and what our trajectory looks like. Last but not least, understanding how our mindsets prime us to react in certain ways to certain kinds of feedback, helps us to anticipate and account for those reactions. To succeed, focus not on the fact of success, but on the work that we put in.
And when we struggle, to focus not on the failure, but on what to do next, and where to turn for help. Self assessment is important in testing our comprehension. But it's not only assessment of what we know and what we've learned that's useful. Asking ourselves questions regularly about how we're learning, how we're feeling, and how we can work with our very human reactions in a learning process sets us up for the best possible chance of success. We're humans, with human brains, and the better we understand our brains and how they work, the more we'll be able to achieve.