Building a metacognition curriculum
For the past few years, I try to take a bit of time out of the curriculum to talk about important “metacognitive” ideas, how students should think about their own learning, and view their mind and intellectual progress. At first, this started as a meandering discussion about the origin of grades (to be discussed on a later post), but I’ve also discussed many of the fantastic ideas I’ve taken away from Study Hacks (see an Open Letter to Students on the Danger of Seeing School as a Trial to Survive to get a sense of how awesome this blog is), the importance of sleep, and perhaps most importantly, the work of Carol Dweck, and the very important role our mindset plays in learning and achiving our potential. My goal was always to present students with some of the seeds of the work scientists do to answer questions like “how does praise affect students’ ability to learn.” In the past, I’ve given out articles, and we’ve discussed the experiments in the articles and the implications of the finding. While all this got good reviews from the students, and I would often hear “fixed mindset” offered as a check to a student who seemed to be slipping to far into the “I can’t do this” attitude, this year, I really want to create more of a curriculum that pushes students to really reflect on some of this work, and its meaning in their own lives.
I’m starting this tomorrow with my intro physics students. We’re reading “How Not to Talk to Your Kids” , which summarizes Dweck’s fascinating research, and I’ve asked them to answer a few questions on Webassign (which I’m really starting to like):
- What was the question researchers were trying to answer in this article? Describe how the experiment was set up? What did the researchers conclude?
- Describe the meaning of a ‘fixed’ and ‘growth’ mindset in your own words.
- Which mindset do you think most of your friends have? Which mindset do you think you have? Give evidence.
- Share any other thoughts or insights you have after reading this article.
It’s my hope that this assignment will better seed our discussion and ensure that every student participates more fully.
If you have any ideas for good metacognitive resources, I’d love to hear them in the comments.