The following is an adaptation of the workshop I
planned for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Academy. It
represents an activity I do with teachers that helps them to make their
thinking visible as they are problem solving. The activity is intended to
prepare the way for the problem solvers to write metacognitive memoirs (which I
wrote about here).
Metacognitive Memoirs: Making Thinking Visible
Schema Activation: Making Your Thinking Visible [10 minutes]
Why are you here? What do you hope to get out of
this presentation (blog post)? Please write your thinking down in order to make
it public and permanent.
Focus: Metacognition [5 minutes]
Schoenfeld found that one of the major issues
novice problem solvers face when they encounter non-routine problems is an
inability to monitor, and therefore regulate, their thinking. It’s what I call
flat-lining. Einstein called it insanity.
Not surprisingly, the National Resource Council
(2005) wrote in How Students Learn
that one of the primary principles associated with learning is The Importance
of Self Monitoring. They write:
“Meta” is a prefix that can mean after, along with, or beyond. In the psychological literature, “metacognition” is used to refer to people’s knowledge about themselves as information processors. This includes knowledge about what we need to do in order to learn and remember information (e.g., most adults know that they need to rehearse an unfamiliar phone number to keep it active in short-term memory while they walk across the room to dial the phone). And it includes the ability to monitor our current understanding to make sure we understand. Other examples include monitoring the degree to which we have been helpful to a group working on a project. (p. 10)
The focus of this workshop is to help us to be
intentional about our thinking so that we can examine it, share it, and
improve it.
Actions: Sowing Seeds [30 minutes]
As you work through this problem, try to be
aware of your thinking as you make decisions about how to proceed. You will
want to write as much of your thinking down as you can so that it will be
available later as you work on your memoir. Also, keep track of choices you
decided against and why. Were these possible pitfalls you avoided or just
different approaches? What would have happened if you followed these paths
instead?
This is a lot to keep track of, which means you
probably will not arrive at a solution in the time provided. That is to be
expected. In fact, if you can complete a task quickly, it was probably not a
problem but an exercise. Only the problems found on sitcoms get rapped up in
under twenty minutes.
After about ten minutes stop and on a separate
piece of paper write a reasoning recount.
What steps have you taken so far, and why did you take them? Don’t forget to
include things you chose not to do and the rationale behind those decisions.
Reflection: Where did you ...? [15 minutes]
As you review your reasoning recount, try to
identify where you are:
- Assessing (gathering data about your thinking and your progress);
- Analyzing (evaluating what was working and what was not);
- Adjusting (changing course because what you were doing was not making sufficient progress toward your goal); and
- Acting (putting your plan into action).
Thus far, most of the memoirs have been written
as narratives. A few problem solvers layer their thinking on using sticky notes
or the comment function of Word. We have also been experimenting with using two
columns – putting the thinking in the left-hand side in order to recognize its
importance in the process. Recently, some problem solvers have been using
technology to record their thinking as they solve problems (a la this post).
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So what are your thoughts about this approach to
making thinking visible?
