EDPSYCH 526 A (SLN 3084) Metacognition

and EDC&I 505 U (SLN 3025) Seminar on Metacognition

 

Spring Quarter, 2004, Wednesday , 4:30-6:50     

Miller Hall, Room 216

Syllabus on line at http://faculty.washington.edu/sunolen/526/526_syl_04.htm

Instructors:

Professors John Frederiksen  frederik@u.washington.edu 

and Susan Nolen sunolen@u.washington.edu

 

Class Listerve

 

Course Description

 

Students read and discuss theoretical and research papers from the extensive literature on metacognition. Focuses on defining the concept of metacognition, establishing its range of applicability to educational matters, and becoming familiar with excellent examples of metacognitive research.

 

Metacognition involves "thinking about thinking." The seminar course will include important papers in the field, looking at metacognition as a cognitive and social processes, and as knowledge students have about the ways they work. The readings and discussion will emphasize how metacognition contributes to learning in the classroom.

 

Course Requirements

 

Student participation is a fundamental aspect of the course.  The class will be organized into groups.  The groups will be responsible for leading discussions and designing class activities relevant to each of the papers studied.  The groups are asked to distribute to the class the week before an overview of each paper and a set of questions or issues to help focus study and debate.  The overview should include: (i) the purpose of the paper, (ii) a brief summary, and (iii) an outline of general issues raised by the work.  The groups will also prepare an activity for the class to foster discussion and participation.  Ideas for activities are (i) organizing a debate over an issue raised by the paper, (ii) presenting some assessment task for critical evaluation, (iii) showing examples of students’ assessments for the class to score, and (iv) developing a scoring rubric for an assessment task.  Following the class discussion and activity, the group is asked to produce a short, written report.  This should include the overview of the paper, the plan for the classroom discussion and activity, and a reflection on the effectiveness of their class session.  The report is due the week following the activity.

 

There will be a course paper or project. Students may use their group as a collaborative resource in developing their papers or projects, but they are each responsible for writing an individual paper.  A paper might address topics such as: critically analyzing various approaches for incorporating metacognition in instruction, analyzing ways for identifying evidence for the role played by metacognition in classroom learning, looking at the relationships of metacognition to transfer and "learning to learn", and the like.   A project might be developing a way of assessing metacognition in a learning transcript, trying out a metacognitive learning strategy with some students, or introducing metacognitive reflection into a collaborative learning group and analyzing how it worked in the group.

For example, a student interested in assessing metacognition might design a protocol for students to use in presenting their work that will reveal their metacognitive awareness of how they worked. The student might try out their assessments with some students in a classroom and develop a method for scoring the student assessments they have collected.  The student would then analyze their data in order to show how the assessment addresses the metacognitive skills they have chosen or how it supports students’ learning.  Other types of projects are possible.  In the final week, the students will report to the class on their papers.   A report describing the development and results of their paper or project will be submitted by each student at the end of the course.

 

Grading will be based on the following:

  • 20% for class participation
  • 40% for class presentations (evaluated as a group product)
  • 40 % for your research project report (evaluated individually)

 

Course readings will be available on by the second week of classes.  (Some journal articles are available online as well). The readings for April 7 will be distributed in class.  Some readings are required, some optional.  Some of these have been decided in advance, others will be announced as the course progresses.

 

Optional Supplementary Text

D. J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, & A. C. Graesser (Eds.) (1998). Metacognition in educational theory and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Course Outline

Week 1 (March 31).  Introduction to the course and its organization. What is metacognition?  Class Activity:  Getting to know one another.  Overview of readings.  Group Organization.

Week 2 (April 7).  Foundations.

Brown, A. L. (1987).  Metacognition, executive control, self-regulation and other more mysterious mechanism.  In F. E. Weinert, & R. H. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition,  motivation, and understanding (pp. 65-116): Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Collins, A., Brown J., & Newman, S.  (1989).  Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the craft of reading, writing, and mathematics.  In L, Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, Learning, and Instruction: Essays in Honor of Robert Glaser, 453-494.  Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Hacker, D. J. (1998). Definitions and empirical foundations. In D. J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Metacognition in educational theory and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, chapter 1, pp. 1-24.

Schoenfeld, A. (1983). Beyond the purely cognitive: Belief systems, social cognitions, and metacognitions as driving forces in intellectual performance. Cognitive Science, 7, 329-363.

Schoenfeld, A. H. (1987). What’s all the fuss about metacognition? In Schoenfeld, A. H. (Ed), Cognitive Science and Mathematics Education, pages 189-215.

Week 3 (April 14). Optional Background Readings. (This is AERA Week. The class doesn’t meet, but we suggest if you are on campus getting together as a research group to work on paper/project ideas.)

Flavell, J. H. (1979).  Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive-developmental inquiry.  American Psychologist, 34(10), 906-911.

Schraw, G., & Moshman (1995). Metacognitive theories. Educational Psychology Review, 7, 351-371.

Week 4 (April 21). Development of metacognition

Brown, A. L., & Reeve, R. A. (1986).  Reflections on the growth of reflection in children.  Cognitive Development, 1, 405-416.

Cross, D. R., & Paris, S. G. (1988). Developmental and instructional analyses of children’s metacognition and reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(2), 131-142.

Rogoff, B., & Gardner, W. (1984). Adult guidance of cognitive development. In  B. Rogoff & J. Lave (Eds.), Everyday cognition: Its development in social context. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, chapter 4, pp. 95-116.

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1983).  Child as co-investigator: Helping children to gain insight into their own mental processes.  In S. G. Paris, M. Olson, & H. W. Stevenson (Eds.), Learning and motivation in the classroom. (pp. 61-82)  Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum

Wellman, H. M. (1977). The early development of intentional memory behavior. Human Development, 20(2), 86-101.

Week 5 (April 28). Goals, strategies, and motivation

Nolen, S. B. (1988). Reasons for studying: Motivational orientations and study strategies. Cognition and Instruction, 5(4), 269-287.

Graham, S., & Golan, S. (1991). Motivational influences on cognition: Task involvement, ego involvement, and depth of information processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 187-194.

Pintrich, P., & de Groot, E. V. (1990). Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(1), 33-40.

Nolen, S. B. (1996). Why study? How reasons for learning influence strategy selection. Educational Psychology Review, 8(4), 335-355.

_____________Readings for week 5 below this line are optional_________________

Commentaries on Nolen (1988):

Brown, A. L. (1988). Motivation to learn and understand: On taking charge of one's own learning. Cognition & Instruction, 5(4), 311-321.

Lepper, M. R. (1988). Motivational considerations in the study of instruction. Cognition & Instruction, 5(4), 289-309.

Week 6 Self-regulated Learning

Zimmerman, B. J. (1989). A social cognitive view of self-regulated academic learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(3), 329-339.

Winne, P. H. (1995). Inherent details in self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 30(4), 173-188.

Wolters, C. A. (2003). Regulation of Motivation: Evaluating an Underemphasized Aspect of Self-Regulated Learning. Educational Psychologist, 38(4), 189-205.

_____________Readings for week 6 below this line are optional_________________

Commentaries on Winne (1995):

Boekaerts, M. (1995). Self-regulated learning: Bridging the gap between metacognitive and metamotivation theories. Educational Psychologist, 30(4), 195-200.

Pressley, M. (1995). More about the development of self-regulation: Complex, long-term, and thoroughly social. Educational Psychologist, 30(4), 207-212.

Butler, R. (2000). What learners want to know: The role of achievement goals in shaping information seeking, learning, and interest. In C. Sansone & J. M. Harackiewicz (Eds.), Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: The search for optimal motivation and performance. San Diego: Academic Press.

Kuhn, D., & Pearsall, S. (1998). Relations between metastrategic knowledge and strategic performance. Cognitive Development, 13, 227-247.

Week 7 (May 12). Epistemology beliefs & metacognition

Kitchener, K. S. (1983). Cognition, metacognition, and epistemic cognition: A three-level model of cognitive processing. Human Development, 26(4), 222-232.

Kuhn, D., Cheney, R., & Weinstock, M. (2000). The development of epistemological understanding. Cognitive Development, 15(3), 309-328.

Hammer, D., & Elby, A. (2002). On the form of a personal epistemology. In Hofer, B. K. & Pintrich, P. R. (Eds.), Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing, pages 169-190.

Hofer, B. K., & Pintrich, P. R. (1997). The development of epistemological theories: Beliefs about knowledge and knowing and their relation to learning. Review of Educational Research, 67(1), 88-140.

White, R. T., & Gunstone, R. F. (1989). Metalearning and conceptual change. International Journal of Science Education, 11, Special Issue, 577-586.

Week 8 (May 19). Social contexts/learning environments

Hatano, G. & Inagaki, K. (2003).  When is conceptual change intended?: A cognitive-sociocultural view.  In G.M. Sinatra & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), Intentional conceptual change (pp.407-427). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Hogan, K. Collective metacognition: The interplay of individual, social, and cultural meanings in small groups’ reflective thinking. In Columbus, F. (Ed.), Advances in psychology research, vol. 7, pages 199-239.

Palincsar, A. S.  (1998).  Social constructivist perspectives on teaching and learning.  Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 345-375.

 

Week 9 (May 26). Social contexts/learning environments

Frederiksen, J. R., & White, B. Y. (1997). Cognitive facilitation: A method for promoting reflective collaboration.  In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning.  Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto.

B. White Ref. On Inquiry Island. The ThinkerTools software and curriculum and the Inquiry Island software can be found at:  http://thinkertools.soe.berkeley.edu/

Palinscar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1(2), 117-175.

Vye, N., Schwartz, D., Bransford, J., Barron, B., Zech, L., and The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderilt (1998). SMART environments that support monitoring, reflection, and revision.  In D. J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Metacognition in educational theory and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, chapter 1, pp. 1-24.

Week 10 (June 2).  Student presentations of projects.