Watching the videos of this course, I had some difficulty grasping the definition of metacognition that is used. The definition provided contains this sentence: “It is vital that learners move from empirical and experiential understanding to pattern recognition and theory making – in this respect, metacognition is key.”.

Although I think this is true, I am not sure if this should be part of the definition.To me, it seems like two concepts are merged together in this module: metacognition and conceptual thinking.

The dictionary of Cambridge says metacognition is “knowledge and understanding of your thinking”. Conceptualization is “to form an idea or principle in your mind”.

Thinking about thinking
Watching the videos of this course, I learned thinking about thinking (metacognition) can be done in different ways.

The most basic level is declaring what you know and how you learned this. Next, you can reflect on your learning process, think about how effective this was and how to improve your learning experience next time. You might think about how you reached an outcome, so you can repeat that next time. It is also useful to try and align what you think you did with what was expected of you and what you actually did. While reviewing others, you might comment on their learning process. Using these reflecting techniques helps you to be able to create valuable knowledge.

Another way to engage in metacognition is to reflect on your and other’s ability to analyse information, to recognize patterns, and creating new concepts based on these patterns. Furthermore, you might think about how to be a critical thinker, being able to discern information and to validate and give arguments to what you or others create. To become a strategic thinker and survive in the 21th century, it’s essential to learn these skills.

Metacognition can also be about how you or others present information. You might reflect on the structure of a learning artifact and if it meets requirements of presentation set up by the teacher or disciplinary field.

And finally, epistemological reflecting is important to realise how thinking works in different fields or disciplines. For example how you create and deduce meaning in History, versus Literature. I can imagine literature might focus more on aesthetics, and history more about facts.

Conceptual thinking

Conceptual thinking is working with a concept, not how to work with a concept. By using metacognition you might have learned that working with a framework or concept can improve learning to a skill. By using conceptual thinking, you, for example, might use a concept like jazz theory, as a mnemonic tool for learning to play scales. Or, perhaps, you  recognise patters and invent a concept about scales that was of wasn’t already thought about by others.

When applying conceptual thinking, you might be reviewing a concept of others, using a framework for your work, or creating a new idea. I argue this is not metacognition. So, metacognition can used as a tool to learn how to engage in conceptual thinking, so eventually learners can move from empirical and experiential understanding to pattern recognition and theory making. 

Do you agree?

Technology

I think technology can help with achieving both metacognition and conceptual thinking. Technologies help by creating spaces to go in and out of cognition and metacogntion. But also to go in and out of working with particilur information and think about the underlaying concept.

Also,  documenting progress can help you recognize patterns in your thinking, as well as recognize patterns concerning the content to create new concepts or attach the content to an existing concept.

In the syllabus used for this course (Cope & Kalantzis, 2017), an example is given of scholar using two ‘columns’. Left for cognition, right for metacognition. I argue you need three. Two for cognition, using one for content and one for conceptualization working together with your peers. And a third for metacognition, thinking about your and other’s learning process, critical thinking, reviewing and presentation.

What do you think?

References

Cope, W., Kalantzis, M. Cognitive Dimensions of Learning. Retrieved from: https://www.coursera.org/learn/elearning/supplement/9gJ9v/cognitive-dimensions-of-learning.

Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2017). Conceptualizing e-learning. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds), e-Learning Ecologies. New York: Routledge.