Week 4 - Metacognition and learning
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Trying to grasp the concept of 'metacognition' through different lenses
Trying to grasp the concept of 'metacognition' through different lenses
Metacognition has been a tough concept to understand, because at a great extent it is intuitive, therefore trying to conceptualize it and connect it to theory through this week's readings, has been difficult for me. That being said, I tried to make some personal connections that might help me wrap my head around this concept better.
Metacognition is a recursive algorithm?
Metacognition is a recursive algorithm?
Metacognition, as introduced by by J. Flavell (1979) and defined simply as "thinking about thinking", made me think of recursion in programming.
"In computer science, recursion is a method of solving a computational problem where the solution depends on solutions to smaller instances of the same problem. Recursion solves such recursive problems by using functions that call themselves from within their own code. The approach can be applied to many types of problems, and recursion is one of the central ideas of computer science.", from Wikipedia
The way I connect this to metacognition, is that metacognitive thinking in a way, is like a high-order brain function calling itself? Because you're doing something (the starting function - cognitive action) and then you base your thinking upon this broader event to analyze it into smaller bits and "solve" it (which in metacognition is reflecting on it and *possibly* adapting your strategies). These smaller functions might be that you're monitoring your task for example, and seeing if your actions are working and if you are progressing well. In that function, the "exit event", which returns to the original function (cognitive action) is a possible trigger event, which could possibly be you realizing that something is not working and that you need to adjust your strategy.
Of course this doesn't happen in a linear way in real life, we are constantly monitoring our actions, but it's a way of modelling it to simplify the concept for me.
After my initial thoughts, I found this relevant viewpoint which was interesting:
"Metacognition can involve recursive processes in which individuals’ specific experiences are interpreted on the basis of an awareness of the larger context in which those specific experiences occur. For example, failure at a task may be understood and attributed to one or more factors in the context of other failures and successes. Broader ideas about the patterns and qualities of individuals’ lives are then understood as evolving as these specific experiences are incorporated to related other experiences. For example, an appraisal of one’s competence may be naturally affected by how a series of specific successes or failures are understood (Moritz and Lysaker, 2018)"
by: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00567/full
Metacognition in cinema?
Metacognition in cinema?
Metacognition made me also think of the movie 'Inception'.
It's been a long time since I saw the movie but roughly what happens is that the protagonist is a skilled thief who specializes in stealing secrets from people's minds while they dream. So, instead of breaking into safes, he breaks into dreams. He gets a special job which is to 'plant' an idea in someone's head instead of stealing it. But, in order for the idea to 'stick', he has to go as deep as 3 layers of dreaming!
The movie I think is again connected to the concept of recursion, but illustrated this time as different layers of consciousness (a dream inside of a dream).
The way I understand this is that, firstly metacognition requires you to go deeper inside your brain but at the same time it's more abstract than cognition.
Just as Inception deals with dreams within dreams, metacognition involves thinking about thinking - creating layers of consciousness.
Secondly, the characters in the movie must maintain awareness of which dream level they're in, similar to how metacognition requires us to step back and observe our own thought processes.
I'm not the first one that made the connection of Inception & recursion, here are a few relevant viewpoints that I found:
https://www.alexhyett.com/recursion/
Picture taken by me
Metacognition is a babushka!
Metacognition is a babushka!
This is a picture of a Russian nesting doll, or a 'babushka', located in my grandma's house. It's basically smaller dolls inside of the bigger one, which I used to be fascinated with as a child.
Now, while learning about metacognition, the concept of the babushka becomes useful again.
The outer layer as I see it, is the cognitive action. It's the most obvious one, and most noticeable one in our lives.
And then come the less observable layers, which is all the metacognitive thinking that goes on. I also connect this concept to a key aspect of metacognition which is self-awareness. The deeper you go into the babushka and reaching the core of it, it's like the level of self-awareness deepens.
Again, this is only a symbolization to help me visualize and understand metacognitive aspects better.
This week's tasks
This week's tasks
Task 1: Individual Task - Thinking Journal
Task 1: Individual Task - Thinking Journal
This week, instead of a SRL table, we were called to complete a thinking journal that had three basic parts, the 'Before', the 'During', and the 'After'.
Task 2: Collaborative Task
Task 2: Collaborative Task
Description:
In this task I ask you Students in LET Scientific grounding to take on two roles – you as a learner and you as a teacher.
Self-organize yourselves into groups of two-three students. After reading the compulsory (and if you wish, optional too) materials, organize a live TEAMS meeting (or a f2f) with your team members and discuss in groups the following questions. I will create chats in this channel for each group - write down a summary of your discussion for 1) me as a learner and 2) me as a teacher. The questions are:
Me as a learner:
Do you remember situations where you used such metacognitive skills as monitoring and control? How did it happen? What strategies did you use?
Do you remember any examples of support (e.g., task instruction, prompts, etc.) that would activate your metacognition? How was the support provided? Which metacognitive processes did it target?
Have you noticed whether you become more aware of your metacognition when you are engaged in collaborative learning?
Have you noticed any effects of technology on your metacognitive thinking while you study? Do you use some technological tools specifically to help you with your learning process and metacognitive thinking?
Me as a teacher:
Do you create learning tasks that would activate the metacognitive processes (planning - monitoring - evaluating) of your students? How do you do it? How could you potentially do it?
Can you provide an example of support (e.g., task instruction, prompts, etc.) that would activate your learners' metacognition? How do you provide such support and which metacognitive processes is it supposed to target?
Some thoughts from the future
This was the first collaborative task that I faced communication challenges in, which at the time of the collaboration, I faced them with negative feelings of disappointment/frustration. However, thinking about this retrospectively, it was a good learning experience for me as to how to approach such situations with the other person and trying to really listen to them and figure it out. It was also a lesson about taking initiative and openly saying what I think went wrong, instead of only thinking about it myself and getting emotionally 'charged'.
References and Resources
References and Resources
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