Fall 2009 » Student Research » Thinking about Thinking

March, 2009

Thinking about Thinking

By P.J. Hirschey

Metacognition:
The Road Map to Understanding

Have you ever taken a long road trip? You know where you're beginning. You know where you want to go, but what is the best way to get there? There are many different routes you could take. All lead to the same destination, but some are faster and more efficient than others.
Learning and problem solving work in much the same way. When presented with a problem, you know the starting point; you know your destination­the solution. But how do you know the best, most efficient mental route to take?

That is where metacognition comes in. Metacognition is a buzz word heard often in educational circles today. The term was coined by John Flavell of Stanford University in 1976, but the concept it describes has been around for more than 100 years. However, providing a precise definition for this concept has proven tricky, even for experts in educational psychology.

"Metacognition is about being aware of and taking control of your cognitive processes," explains George Wardlow, a professor of agricultural and extension education. "Then, you can purposefully channel your cognitive resources to solve problems. You could
say metacognition is, at its most basic, thinking about thinking."
Being aware of one's own thoughts sounds simple, but, surprisingly, for most people it isn't as easy as it seems, because people act intuitively, without really being aware of why they are doing what they're doing. This type of "auto-pilot" thinking works well for handling many situations, but when faced with complex problems, students who have not developed metacognitive skills have difficulty solving them and often give up in frustration.

Many educational psychologists now stress an instructional approach known as Cognitive Strategy Instruction (CSI) as a way to develop these metacognitive skills. By using an approach known as 'scaffolding,' teachers support, rather than explicitly direct students as they learn, by providing learning prompts and checklists, demonstrating proper procedure, and encouraging thinking aloud (see Pate article).

This technique encourages students to understand how they arrive at a solution, rather than just "knowing" the "right" answer. Once these thinking skills become familiar to students, they begin to exercise them unconsciously, which leads to greater efficiency in both learning and problem solving.

Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." A more updated version of this quote might be something like, "I think about thinking; therefore I think better." That is precisely what UA student Michael Pate discovered when he began conducting research into cognitive function and problem solving last autumn.

Pate became interested in various techniques of learning and problem-solving during a course that he took under agriculture professor George Wardlow on methods in agricultural education. In it, Wardlow discussed alternatives to traditional teaching approaches and pointed out ways in which teachers could encourage their students to take greater control over their own thinking and learning processes.

"I'm one of those instructors who thinks that lecture is very time efficient, but it's not necessarily very learning efficient for the students," Wardlow explains. "In most of the classes that I teach, we try to incorporate a lot of 'hands on' work, as well. I do that to model for our students that want to be teachers or industry instructors alternatives to lecture that can improve learning efficiency."

Intrigued by the ideas the class raised, Pate applied for and received a research grant from the Bumpers College to study the issue with Wardlow.

He then set out to put these ideas to the test. His research focused specifically on a technique known as Thinking Aloud Pair Problem Solving (TAPPS). TAPPS is a technique designed to encourage metacognitive thinking (see side bar) by ensuring that students verbalize their thoughts while working through a task.

Pate tested students in a mechanics class as they worked to troubleshoot and repair lawnmower engines. He divided the class into two groups. All of the students were then given engines with the same problem and asked to diagnose and repair them. Students in the control group worked alone, while students in the second group worked in pairs. In each pair, one student was assigned the job of problem-solver, and the other was assigned to be the listener. The sole responsibility of the listeners was to encourage their partners to fully verbalize their thought processes while troubleshooting and making repairs. They were told to meet even the shortest silences with questions and prompts to keep their partners talking. Listening partners were not allowed to offer suggestions or instructions but were simply there as a 'sounding board' for the problem solvers.

Pate discovered that students who used the TAPPS technique showed more than double the success rates in repairing their equipment than did students in the control group, and finished their repairs an average of six minutes faster. The reason for this success, he found, lay in having the students constantly verbalize their thoughts. By doing this, the students were forced to become aware of their own thought processes, which encouraged them to check themselves and correct faulty steps in logic, thereby making the process more efficient.

"I think it shows us another way to get our students to think in steps, to think more clearly and to be more aware of what they are doing," explains professor Don Johnson, one of Pate's advisers in the project. "Our goal now is to move students from needing the listening partner, especially since he or she isn't actually doing anything to help solve the problem. We found that even though the control group was encouraged to think aloud, none did. They don't use this process unless someone is there to prompt them."
Pate and Johnson point out that the next step is to develop successful techniques to train students in metacognitive thought without needing to be prompted. This would produce students with more efficient problem-solving skills, Johnson notes.

For Pate, who plans to teach agriculture at the high school and later college levels, the possibilities for classroom application are intriguing.

"This represents a new way of teaching students how to think," he said. "They are going to face all kinds of problems on a daily basis both in school and outside of school, and this technique is effective on far more than just lawnmower engines."