OAE Pedagogy: Student Differences/Variations
Thank you Kineta Sanford for consolidating this information.
Metacognition- thinking about your own thinking processes, including skills, memory capabilities, and the ability to monitor your learning.
In order for teachers to teach students about their Metacognition, they must understand metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation.
Metacognitive knowledge- knowledge about or own cognitive processes and an understanding of how to regulate those processes to maximize learning.
Three categories of metacognitive knowledge
Metacognitive regulation- the purposeful act of attempting to control our own cognitions, beliefs, emotions, and values. It allows us to use or metacognitive knowledge to function efficiently in learning situations.
-requires using executive control functions, a collection of mental processes that include planning, monitoring, and evaluating strategies.
Theory of Mind in Childhood
The early understanding of the mind and the “mental world” is theory of mind.
Egocentrism in Adolescence
Adolescent egocentrism is difficulty differentiating between one’s own thoughts and the thoughts of others.
-Biology and environment factor into development of Metacognition.
-Neurological impairments can impede the development of Metacognition.
-Frontal brain damage can impair metacognitive abilities.
Students also possess individual characteristics that determine whether they choose to use metacognitive skills they have developed.
-Belief about the nature of the task (task knowledge): Students who believe that the info to be learned is easy will not use more advanced skills and strategies such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating.
-Motivation: Students who are highly motivated to learn are more likely to invest time and energy in metacognitive strategies than are students who are less interested in learning.
-Prior knowledge about topic: The more students know about a topic, the better they are able to understand, organize, and retain new information.
-Prior success using metacognitive skills: Successful use of metacognitive skills will lead to increased use of those skills.
Applications: Learning Strategies
Reading Comprehension
-Two common strategies to enhance reading comprehension are reciprocal teaching and the PQ4R strategy.
Reciprocal teaching is a structured conversation in which teachers and students discuss sections of a text. (4 steps)
PQ4R
Writing skills
Intervention strategies suggest that direct instruction and modeling of metacognitive skills can improve writing skills. Teachers can:
-provide instruction in and modeling of planning strategies such as (1) determining the audience and (2) indentifying the main ideas, (3) outlining the organization and (4) making rough drafts and revising. Procedural facilitations, are a set of prompts used during planning and revision.
-provide assistance in monitoring and evaluating progress.
Note Taking
Functions of note taking
Study Time
A model based on Vygotskian theory, the region of proximal learning, suggests that individuals will study items close to being learned but not quite mastered.
In order for teachers to teach students about their Metacognition, they must understand metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation.
Metacognitive knowledge- knowledge about or own cognitive processes and an understanding of how to regulate those processes to maximize learning.
Three categories of metacognitive knowledge
- Person knowledge- also called declarative knowledge refers to understanding our own capabilities.
- Task knowledge- or procedural knowledge, relates to how we perceive the difficulty (or ease) of a task. May be judged by content, length, or type of assignment.
- Strategy knowledge- or conditional knowledge. Describes capability for using strategies to learn information.
Metacognitive regulation- the purposeful act of attempting to control our own cognitions, beliefs, emotions, and values. It allows us to use or metacognitive knowledge to function efficiently in learning situations.
-requires using executive control functions, a collection of mental processes that include planning, monitoring, and evaluating strategies.
- planning involves scheduling learning strategies and selecting which strategies to use in different contexts.
- monitoring involves periodically checking on how well the planned strategy is working.
- evaluating involves appraising the outcomes of the cognitive strategies used.
Theory of Mind in Childhood
The early understanding of the mind and the “mental world” is theory of mind.
- False-beliefs: the understanding that a belief is only one of many mental representations, which can be false or accurate.
- Appearance-reality distinctions: a person’s ability to understand that something may look one way (appearance) but actually be something else (reality).
- Visual perspective-taking: understanding that views of physical objects differ based on one’s perspective. (two levels) -Level one: (2-3 y.o.) children understand that another person can see something if the person’s eyes are open and looking in the appropriate direction without any visual obstructions. -Level two: (4-5 y.o.) children understand that another person can see something in a different way or from a different view than they see it.
- Introspection: Children’s awareness and understanding of their own thoughts.
Egocentrism in Adolescence
Adolescent egocentrism is difficulty differentiating between one’s own thoughts and the thoughts of others.
- Imaginary audience: The adolescent imagines or believes that he or she is the focus of attention in social settings due to a lack of differentiation between self and others’ thoughts.
- Person fable: Adolescents mistakenly believe that they are unique such that no one else can understand their situation.
-Biology and environment factor into development of Metacognition.
-Neurological impairments can impede the development of Metacognition.
-Frontal brain damage can impair metacognitive abilities.
Students also possess individual characteristics that determine whether they choose to use metacognitive skills they have developed.
-Belief about the nature of the task (task knowledge): Students who believe that the info to be learned is easy will not use more advanced skills and strategies such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating.
-Motivation: Students who are highly motivated to learn are more likely to invest time and energy in metacognitive strategies than are students who are less interested in learning.
-Prior knowledge about topic: The more students know about a topic, the better they are able to understand, organize, and retain new information.
-Prior success using metacognitive skills: Successful use of metacognitive skills will lead to increased use of those skills.
Applications: Learning Strategies
Reading Comprehension
-Two common strategies to enhance reading comprehension are reciprocal teaching and the PQ4R strategy.
Reciprocal teaching is a structured conversation in which teachers and students discuss sections of a text. (4 steps)
- Summarizing: Students must verbally summarize the text, which requires them to attend to the main points and check or monitor their understanding.
- Questioning: Students must create questions based on the text, a form of monitoring their understanding.
- Clarifying: Students are asked to clarify difficult points in order to critically evaluate their understanding of the material.
- Predicting: students are asked to make predictions about future content in order to test their inferences between main points.
PQ4R
- Preview: Consistent with the executive control process of planning, the first step in reading comprehension is to survey or preview the material to be read.
- Question: Developing questions based on the outline or section headings allows students the opportunity to plan or identify the important info that will be obtained from the reading assignment.
- Read: While reading the assigned chapter, article, or book, students attempt to answer the questions developed from the outline or section headings.
- Reflect: The process of monitoring one’s reading comprehension includes taking breaks from the reading material to relate information to prior knowledge and create examples beyond those provided in the text.
- Recite: Reciting or rehearsing the info in the text is an attempt to store the info in long-term memory.
- Review: Although it might be thought that review implies rereading, it actually requires the student to mentally, rather than physically, think through the chapter contents in order to monitor how much of the material has been learned.
Writing skills
Intervention strategies suggest that direct instruction and modeling of metacognitive skills can improve writing skills. Teachers can:
-provide instruction in and modeling of planning strategies such as (1) determining the audience and (2) indentifying the main ideas, (3) outlining the organization and (4) making rough drafts and revising. Procedural facilitations, are a set of prompts used during planning and revision.
-provide assistance in monitoring and evaluating progress.
Note Taking
Functions of note taking
- Encoding: the process provides assistance in the encoding of material because writing down ideas from lecture material is a second form of encoding that goes beyond simply listening to the lecture.
- Encoding plus storage: While taking notes may serve an encoding function, reviewing notes provides the additional benefit of returning to the lecture material for review and storage of the info in memory.
- External storage: external storage-- or the review of notes borrowed form another student—can still benefit the storage of info.
Study Time
A model based on Vygotskian theory, the region of proximal learning, suggests that individuals will study items close to being learned but not quite mastered.
Transfer can be defined broadly as the influence of prior knowledge, skills, strategies, or principles on learning.
Doctrine of formal discipline- students in Latin and Geometry could improve logical thinking and improve mental function then transfer it to other disciplines. Edward Thorndike provided evidence against doctrine of formal discipline.
Theory of identical elements- Thorndike’s alternative to doctrine of formal discipline, is a specific view of transfer. Transfer will occur between two learning tasks if the new skill of behavior contains elements that are identical to a skill or behavior of original task.
Low-road transfer- spontaneous, automatic transfer of highly practiced skills, with little need for reflective learning.
Automaticity- occurs when a person performs a skill very fast, very accurately, and with little attention or other cognitive load.
High-road transfer- an individual purposely and consciously applies general knowledge, a strategy, or a principle learned in one situation to a different situation.
Mindful abstraction- defining feature of high-road transfer, the process of retrieving meaningful info and applying it to a new learning context.
Problem-solving transfer- in which we recall a general strategy or principle that we have learned from solving one type of problem and apply it to solve another type of problem.
Analogical transfer- another example of high-road transfer, involves creating or using an existing analogy to aid in understanding a new concept.
Forward-reaching transfer- involves learning a principle or strategy so well that an individual selects it quickly and easily when it is needed in future situations.
Backward-reaching transfer- occurs when an individual deliberately looks for strategies or principles learned in the past to solve a current problem or task.
Success of Low-road Transfer
Extensive practice using rote memorization (memorizing without understanding) leads to discrete bits of information or skills in long term memory that are not meaningfully connected and that fade over time. Students should engage in reflective practice rather than rote memorization. Reflective practice involves developing a conceptual understanding.
Teaching Principles that Facilitate Transfer
-Develop automaticity of skills
-Promote meaningful learning
-Teach metacognitive strategies
-Motivate students to value learning
Develop automaticity of skills- practices must
-be reflective rather than rote
-occur in a variety of contexts
-involve overlearning, in which students engage in continued practice after they have demonstrated mastery.
Promote Meaningful Learning
Take inventory of students’ prior knowledge before starting a new lesson or topic (KWL)
Require students to construct relationship between new info and prior knowledge
Provide students with questions to answer as they read their texts
Use manipulatives
Teach by analogy
Use worked-out examples for practice at problem solving
Teach Metacognitive Strategies
-explicitly teaching students what transfer is leads to greater transfer on novel problems compared to students not instructed about transfer.
-instruction and practice in metacognitive strategies can facilitate transfer
Motivate Students to Value Learning
Encourage students to set mastery goals. Students with mastery goals focus on mastering a task, growing intellectually, and acquiring new skills and knowledge.
More likely to:
-Engage in meaningful learning
-Use metacognitive strategies
-Show high levels of effort.
Capitalize on students’ natural interests when teaching new topics. Students who come to school with individual interest (intrinsic interest) are more likely to use deep-level processing in learning content.
Use techniques to create situational interest (an immediate interest in a particular lesson).
Encourage students to acquire critical dispositions about thinking and learning. High-road, far transfer requires students to develop a conscious and purposeful approach to acquiring knowledge.
Doctrine of formal discipline- students in Latin and Geometry could improve logical thinking and improve mental function then transfer it to other disciplines. Edward Thorndike provided evidence against doctrine of formal discipline.
Theory of identical elements- Thorndike’s alternative to doctrine of formal discipline, is a specific view of transfer. Transfer will occur between two learning tasks if the new skill of behavior contains elements that are identical to a skill or behavior of original task.
Low-road transfer- spontaneous, automatic transfer of highly practiced skills, with little need for reflective learning.
Automaticity- occurs when a person performs a skill very fast, very accurately, and with little attention or other cognitive load.
High-road transfer- an individual purposely and consciously applies general knowledge, a strategy, or a principle learned in one situation to a different situation.
Mindful abstraction- defining feature of high-road transfer, the process of retrieving meaningful info and applying it to a new learning context.
Problem-solving transfer- in which we recall a general strategy or principle that we have learned from solving one type of problem and apply it to solve another type of problem.
Analogical transfer- another example of high-road transfer, involves creating or using an existing analogy to aid in understanding a new concept.
Forward-reaching transfer- involves learning a principle or strategy so well that an individual selects it quickly and easily when it is needed in future situations.
Backward-reaching transfer- occurs when an individual deliberately looks for strategies or principles learned in the past to solve a current problem or task.
Success of Low-road Transfer
Extensive practice using rote memorization (memorizing without understanding) leads to discrete bits of information or skills in long term memory that are not meaningfully connected and that fade over time. Students should engage in reflective practice rather than rote memorization. Reflective practice involves developing a conceptual understanding.
Teaching Principles that Facilitate Transfer
-Develop automaticity of skills
-Promote meaningful learning
-Teach metacognitive strategies
-Motivate students to value learning
Develop automaticity of skills- practices must
-be reflective rather than rote
-occur in a variety of contexts
-involve overlearning, in which students engage in continued practice after they have demonstrated mastery.
Promote Meaningful Learning
Take inventory of students’ prior knowledge before starting a new lesson or topic (KWL)
Require students to construct relationship between new info and prior knowledge
Provide students with questions to answer as they read their texts
Use manipulatives
Teach by analogy
Use worked-out examples for practice at problem solving
Teach Metacognitive Strategies
-explicitly teaching students what transfer is leads to greater transfer on novel problems compared to students not instructed about transfer.
-instruction and practice in metacognitive strategies can facilitate transfer
Motivate Students to Value Learning
Encourage students to set mastery goals. Students with mastery goals focus on mastering a task, growing intellectually, and acquiring new skills and knowledge.
More likely to:
-Engage in meaningful learning
-Use metacognitive strategies
-Show high levels of effort.
Capitalize on students’ natural interests when teaching new topics. Students who come to school with individual interest (intrinsic interest) are more likely to use deep-level processing in learning content.
Use techniques to create situational interest (an immediate interest in a particular lesson).
Encourage students to acquire critical dispositions about thinking and learning. High-road, far transfer requires students to develop a conscious and purposeful approach to acquiring knowledge.
What are high-order thinking skills?
Higher-order thinking involves complex cognitive processes that transform and apply our knowledge, skills, and ideas. Norman R. F. Maier used term reasoning or productive behavior to describe higher order thinking.
Higher-order thinking involves complex cognitive processes that transform and apply our knowledge, skills, and ideas. Norman R. F. Maier used term reasoning or productive behavior to describe higher order thinking.
What are Thinking Dispositions?
Tendencies to explore, to inquire, to seek clarity, to take intellectual risks, to think critically and imaginatively are all thinking dispositions.
-truth seeking: a desire to understand clearly, to seek connections/explanations
-open-mindedness, the tendency to explore alternative views, to generate multiple options
-analytical thinking: the urge for precision, organization, thoroughness, and accuracy
-systematic planning: the drive to set goals, to make and execute plans, and to envision outcomes
-intellectual curiosity: the tendency to wonder, probe and find problems; a zest for inquiry
-confidence in the use of reasons and evidence: the tendency to question the given, to demand justification, and to weigh and assess reasons
-metacognition- the tendency to be aware of and monitor the flow of one’s own thinking and the ability to exercise mature judgment.
Tendencies to explore, to inquire, to seek clarity, to take intellectual risks, to think critically and imaginatively are all thinking dispositions.
-truth seeking: a desire to understand clearly, to seek connections/explanations
-open-mindedness, the tendency to explore alternative views, to generate multiple options
-analytical thinking: the urge for precision, organization, thoroughness, and accuracy
-systematic planning: the drive to set goals, to make and execute plans, and to envision outcomes
-intellectual curiosity: the tendency to wonder, probe and find problems; a zest for inquiry
-confidence in the use of reasons and evidence: the tendency to question the given, to demand justification, and to weigh and assess reasons
-metacognition- the tendency to be aware of and monitor the flow of one’s own thinking and the ability to exercise mature judgment.