Using Reflection and Metacognition to Improve Student Learning

Book excerpt: Research has identified the importance of helping students develop the ability to monitor their own comprehension and to make their thinking processes explicit, and indeed demonstrates that metacognitive teaching strategies greatly improve student engagement with course material.This book -- by presenting principles that teachers in higher education can put into practice in their own classrooms -- explains how to lay the ground for this engagement, and help students become self-regulated learners actively employing metacognitive and reflective strategies in their education.Key elements include embedding metacognitive instruction in the content matter; being explicit about the usefulness of metacognitive activities to provide the incentive for students to commit to the extra effort; as well as following through consistently.Recognizing that few teachers have a deep understanding of metacognition and how it functions, and still fewer have developed methods for integrating it into their curriculum, this book offers a hands-on, user-friendly guide for implementing metacognitive and reflective pedagogy in a range of disciplines. Offering seven practitioner examples from the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, the social sciences and the humanities, along with sample syllabi, course materials, and student examples, this volume offers a range of strategies for incorporating these pedagogical approaches in college classrooms, as well as theoretical rationales for the strategies presented. By providing successful models from courses in a broad spectrum of disciplines, the editors and contributors reassure readers that they need not reinvent the wheel or fear the unknown, but can instead adapt tested interventions that aid learning and have been shown to improve both instructor and student satisfaction and engagement.