#34 When Students Struggle, Metacognition Matters

Metacognition is "thinking about thinking" or as James Lange describes in his article "Metacognition and Student Learning" in Chronicles of Higher Education "... our ability to assess our own skills, knowledge, or learning."  In today's episode I share a story about how one of my college students passed a very difficult grammar class and in the process became a metacognitive thinker.  We explore how students can learn to think metacognitively and become more successful college students by learning the skill of posing questions to themselves about the material, and as a result become active learners and successful students. 

Transcript

Mickie  0:00 
When I was thinking about a topic for today's podcast, I was thinking about all those new students hitting classes this fall. And so I decided to talk about some of the struggles that they could encounter and how to mitigate some of those struggles, what's happening, and how can it be fixed? Have you ever heard your child say, I'll do better next time, I just need to study harder. I wish I had $1. For every time a student told me that because I would be really, really rich, but I hate to break it to them. But studying harder isn't a thing. Now there's ways you can study better and smarter and easier. But studying harder doesn't really change much. So today we're going to talk about how to help struggling students. And if your kid or you just started college, and you are having a rough time of it, trying to get used to the whole idea of what's going on and get acclimated to college life, it might be worth your time to listen to today's podcast. Today we're going to talk about metacognition and why that is so very, very, very important to a student with a disability. So welcome to College, Disabilities, and Success Episode 34 "When Students Struggle, Metacognition Matters," by Mickie Hayes. The opinions in this podcast are my own, but please reach out to your college, physicians, or legal services for additional information.

Mickie  1:23 
I'm going to start today's podcast with a story. One of my jobs as a Learning Disability Specialist at the college was to help students to study and to tutor students when they ran into problems. Now, my area of expertise as far as academics were concerned, was English: reading and writing, grammar, sentence structure, paragraph structure, that sort of thing. And I had a student who came to me with some serious concerns about his grammar class that he was taking. He was in a particularly difficult grammar class. I knew the teacher, I knew that he was going to be dealing with very high expectations, and high levels of memory and focus. I suspected that neither he nor the instructor expected him to accomplish much, unfortunately. So when he came to me with his request for some study help, one of the things that I did was to restructure it from the basics and teach him grammar from the ground up. But besides that, I also probed him with questions. Now, the way that I tutor, most of the time when I work one on one with a student, is to ask them thought-provoking questions to see how much they actually understand, and how well they respond to that question. And so that's what I was doing when I was talking to him. And he and I spent quite a bit of time together throughout the semester, whenever he had any kind of homework or tests or anything that he felt was a little bit overwhelming for him. As we spent some time together, I realized that he was really starting to catch on to this stuff. And I could ask questions that were a little more complex, and set up scenarios that were more complex that he would probably have, on his test, the kind of college level questions that would be expected of a student in a grammar class. When all was said and done, after we'd spent many, many sessions reviewing and going over the material using this question answer method most of the time, he came up to me and he told me he was so so happy because he got an A on the test. And he was passing his class, and everything was great. And obviously, that made me very happy. But I asked him, "How did you manage this? What did you do that helped you to understand the material?" And what he said to me was, "...well, I just pretended that I had a little Mickie in my pocket, who was asking me questions in my ear." So he would read the question on the test, and pretend that I was asking it to him during our tutoring session. Now, that my friends is metacognition. What he had done is eventually taught himself how to probe and ask questions that would lead to the correct answers. So when he was studying, he was studying that way. When he was tutoring with me, he was tutoring that way. And when he was taking the test, he was thinking that way. Now the definition of metacognition is generally thinking about thinking. Now there's a more official definition that I found in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education called "Metacognition and Student Learning," by James M. Lange. And that link will be in your your show notes today, if you want to research the article. Dr. Lange defines metacognition as "...our ability to access our own skills, knowledge, and learning." That is exactly what my student was doing. During that test, he was accessing his own knowledge, his own learning, his own ability to ask questions that he could then dig deeper to get the answers to. He was thinking about his thinking. He had taken his level from a cursory at a glance, yeah, I think I know this kind of attitude, to really actually thinking about what he was learning to the point where he could explain it to himself, and he could explain it back to the teacher when he did the test. And that's what you as a student, or your child is a student, that's what needs to be done. When a student is studying, they have to take their studying deeper into the meaning of the concept that you're learning. If you have time, when you get a chance, go back to my podcast, Episode 11, where I talked about how to read a college textbook, and listen to what I told you about SQ4R. SQ4R is a system for reading textbooks. And the first two are really important. Survey when you look at a textbook and then question. So before you even start to study material, whatever it happens to be, survey the material, get a broad, overall cursory image - glance - concept of the material that you're going to be responsible to learn. Now, what happens a lot of time in college is that students stop there. They get a general overview of the material. And then they go to class and they listen, they take some notes. But their overview and their information gathering doesn't go deep enough. They don't start to ask themselves questions about the material that they're looking at. So when you study something metacognitively, you take a look at the information and start posing questions, questions that you might not understand about the information. Well, this doesn't make sense. Why does this material tell me to do XYZ? That doesn't make sense to me? You, you don't need the answer. You just need the question. You need to know what you're digging into. Okay, so if I say, well, this doesn't make sense to me, I make a note of that in the book round a piece of paper, what would I do? How would I get that answer? Well, there's a couple of ways I could go back and ask the professor. I could say, well, this doesn't make sense to me. Could you explain to me what I'm missing here? Or I could go back into the chapter and look a little deeper into those paragraphs, and analyze the content inside the paragraphs to see if that explains the information that I need. And that's the point where you're actually looking at something metacognitively. You're not only looking at the topical information, but you are looking deeper at the points. What is this author trying to tell me? Why is this author talking about this information? What is relevant about this heading in this chapter? Take a look at the questions in the back of the chapter. What kinds of information are they digging for? How deep are they going with the information that you need? You should always always always do this the first time you look at a textbook chapter, and if you're not reading a book, and you're listening in class, then as you think of these questions in your, in your head, make a note of them because you can always go back and see if you know the answers after you listen to the lecture. Or you can go back and ask the professor, what did you mean by this? Why did you say it this way, because I am missing some information here that I don't quite get. Professors like that when you come and ask them to explain things a little bit deeper. It shows that you care; it shows that you're interested, and it shows that you're trying to figure things out. You are becoming an active learner, rather than a passive learner. And that's a big, big deal. When you transition from high school into college, very often not always, but very often, when we were in high school, we sort of passively waited to be told, to be taught. Well in college, it doesn't quite work that way. In college, the professor's going to expect you to think through things a little bit more deeply. They're going to expect you to apply the information they give you into a different scenario. They're going to expect you to understand how something that happened 100 years ago, is relevant in today's situation. These are all metacognitive thought processes, and behaviors that college students will eventually develop, if they don't come with those already. And that all goes back to that metacognitive thinking -thinking about thinking- analyzing what you already know, your own levels of knowledge, skills, and learning. And that's what metacognitive learning is all about. And that's why it is so critical, especially for students with disabilities. Because if you're not doing that, instinctively, you need to inquire with disability services, or the tutoring centers at your college, or your professors, or a peer tutor who can help explain it. But you need to have somebody help you to explain it and to understand it a little bit deeper than just that once over cursory glance. 

Mickie  11:07  
Now, sometimes professors will start the class with a question, or sometimes they use those clickers in class that presents a question and surveys the audience to see how you would respond, because they're probing you to see how deeply you thought about the information, and how much you know, upfront. So pay attention to the questions that professors ask in class. And if your professor is asking the group a question, jot the question down, because that will tell you when you go to study, my professor brought this up in class, he or she must think this is really important for me to understand. So do I understand it? Can I explain it to another person without fumbling and stumbling, because that is so, so important. You have to be able to explain it out loud, to yourself, or to another person. Because if you can't say it out loud, you really don't have a handle on it, you really don't know it well enough yet. And it's like smoke, you can see it, you can smell it, maybe you can even taste it, but you can't grab it. And that's what happens. If you don't have the depth of the concept clear in your mind to the point where you can explain it to somebody else out loud, without fumbling and stumbling, you still don't have it yet. So you want to make sure that you're asking yourself the right questions, getting and leading to the right answers, and then repeating the correct answers in the form of a question back at yourself. 

Mickie  12:47  
So if you or your child is struggling as college begins, and they're having a little bit of a hard time, take a closer look at the material itself and look for resources that are out there that would help. Most colleges have tutoring centers, some colleges have specialized tutoring in disability services, you have the opportunity to talk to the professor and always get clarity there, and you can find a partner, a study partner in class who would work with you to help understand the material, but you need to find a way that you as a student can enhance your learning experience so that you can pretend that you've got a little Mickie in your pocket just like my student did, asking the questions that you need to know before you take that test. 

Mickie  13:33  
Have a good semester. And remember, you've got this! It just comes down to using the right techniques and planning for that. So as this semester progresses, you'll be able to be more and more and more successful with your classes. I hope you found today's podcast valuable. I thought that that was one of the most brilliant things that a kid ever said to me when I asked him how he learned it because I knew at that point, he had taken my voice and now transferred it to his own voice. And so if you are helping somebody help them take your voice and transfer it into their voice. Let them ask you the questions just like you were asking them the questions. I have an article on my website, Mickieteaches.com, M i c k i e teachers.com on metacognition and there's another one on SQ4R if you want to review those concepts as your child or you are getting ready for classes to start. They're both really, really important concepts that everybody should know as they're starting back to school. In the meantime, have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you again later. Bye. information contained throughout this podcast has been gleaned from my own personal experiences, but to ensure accuracy please contact the Disability Services at the College of your choice to have first hand information and most up to date policies and procedures followed for your particular institution of higher education. The content in any of these podcasts is not intended as a substitute for information from legal, educational or medical professionals. Always seek the advice of your attorney or qualified health care provider with any questions you may have with regards to legal, educational or medical concerns.,