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METACOGNITION Ko School D190
they can control such matters as
goals,
dispositions, anddttention. Self-awareness promotes self-regulation.
If
students are aware of
how committed (or uncommitted) they areo
reaching
goals, of how strong (or weak) is their disposition to persist,eand of
how
focusedeorwandering) is their attention to a thinking or writing
task, they can regulate their commitment, disposition, and attention
(Marzano
et al., 1988). For example, if studentswere awarek of a lack of
commitment
to writing a long research assignment, noticed that gthey were
procrastinating,
and were aware that they were distracted by more appealing ways to
spend
their time, they could then take action to get started on the
assignment.
But until they are aware of their procrastination and take control by
making
a plan for doing the assignment, they will blissfully continue to
neglect
the assignment.
II. Metacognition
andeThree Types of Knowlee
To increasewh Homepage eir metacognitive bilities,
students
need to possess and be aware of three kinds
of content knowledge:
pdeclarative,
procedural, and conditional. Declarative knowledge is the
factual
v
information that one knows; it can be declared—spoken or written. An
example
is knowinghe formula for calculating momentum in akphysics class
(momentum
= mass- times velocity). Procedur
ly knowledge is
knowledge of
how
to do something, Adult f how to performrhe steps in a process; for ex Homepage ample,
knowing the mass of an
object and Adult its j rate of speed and how to do the
calculation.
Conditional knowledge is knowledge
aboute hen to use a
procedure,
skill, or strategy and when note to use it; why a procedure works and
under
what onditions; and why one Homepage procedure is better than another. For
example,
students need to recognize
that an exam word problem requires the
calculation
of momentum as part of its solution.
This notion of three
kinds of knowledge applies y to learning strategies as well as course
content.
When they sfdy, students need the declarativenowledge that (1) all
reading
assignments are not alike; fo example,i that a history textbook chapter
with factual information differsw from a primarymistorical document,
which
is different from an article interpreting or analyzing that document.
They
need to know that stories and novels differ from arguments. Furthermore
they need to know that there are different kinds of note taking
strategies
useful for annotating these different types of texts. And (2) students
need to know how to actually write different kinds of notes (procedural
knowledge), and (3) they need to know when to apply these kinds of
notes
when they study (conditional knowledge). Knowledge of study strategies
is among the kinds of metacognitive knowledge, and it too requires
awareness
of all three kinds of knowledge.
III. Met Adult ognition
and Study Strategies
Research
shows that explicitly teaching study
str
ategies in content courses improves learning. (Commander &
Valeri-Gold,
2001; Ramp &guffey, 1999; Chiang, 1998; El-Hindi, 1997; McKeachie,
1988).Research also shows that few instructors explicitlyn teach study
strategies; theycseem to assume that students have already learned them
in high school—but they haven’t. (McKeachie, 1988). Rote memorization
is
the usual learning strategy—and often the only strategy—employed by
high
school students when they go to college (Nist, 1993).
Study strategies are diverse and don’t work
in
every context. For example, reading for information acquisition won’t
work
in a literature course and won’t work if students are supposed to
critically
evaluate an article. But students who have learned only the strategy of
reading to pass a quiz on the information will not go beyond this
strategy.
Study strategies don’t necessarily transfer into other domains.
Stude
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