Note: This is adapted from two posts written way back in 2011-2012. The focus on grades is the most obvious difference.
Making a Distinction
While we often use them this way, the words metacognition and reflection are not exactly interchangeable. In brief:
- Metacognition is thinking about thinking.
- Self-reflection is a more general (and somewhat existential) kind of introspection.
The most important habits of mind are reflection and metacognition, and you should engage in both after every task. The reason is simple: To become a better reader, writer, and thinker requires an understanding of how one reads, writes, and thinks; and to inculcate that reflex takes significant time in and out of class.
An immediate example of metacognition would be to assess your reaction to the hyperlink in that last paragraph. Clicking on inculcate defines the term for you. Did you notice the word? Did you click on it? Reflecting on the action you took invites metacognition about your approach to reading. You should also recognize, as you think about that link, that this kind of interactive self-awareness is now part of the way you must learn to read:
Again, pay attention to how you respond to an embedded post like that. Do you open it? Do you set it aside for later? Have you seen it before, and if so, to what extent do you pause to remember what it says? Now consider what you do with this:
This video, which is one level of a lesson on self-control taught in this space, may be more accessible to you. Why? If you watch the video, how do you process its message? Toward the end, for instance, you’ll hear a reference to “capable psychonauts” and see this:
These are universal skills, and your habits around them will determine a lot of your future success. More immediately, of course, reflection and metacognition are useful in all English work, from literature to project-based learning. You may have a weekly requirement, for instance, and that may even be a graded requirement (since abatement isn’t total, and no one can change a system entirely).
Start with our universal writing process. It requires metacognitive self-awareness to function, because the feedback loop built into does not rely on grades. See the last few sections for details:
- Universal Writing Guide | https://tinyurl.com/sisyphus-writes
(The instructional post on the writing process delves even more into the art of writing.)
Here is an excerpt from the end of that writing guide:
In the Humanities makerspace, we use unique systems to generate radial, proxy, and direct feedback, as seen here: tinyurl.com/210feedback.
We focus on process and growth. We avoid scores and rubrics outside of test prep.
Feedback comes from reflection and metacognition throughout and at the end of the process. Consider, as an example: sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=1059.
Feedback also comes from an audience found beyond the walls of the classroom. There are many options for writers now. Medium is one. It takes moments to register and to set up a reading list of essays on subjects you choose by writers not much different from you.
Then you can write and publish, embracing a hypertextual and interstitial environment, as seen here: tinyurl.com/210interstitial.
It’s another idea from Paul Graham: “Who are you to write about x? You are what you write.” There is no barrier to publishing for a wide and diverse audience.
Your search for an authentic audience helps us to discuss metacognition and reflection. Again, we can focus on essays while recognizing that all Humanities work benefits from the same level of self-analysis.
Effective reflection and metacognition is both a key and a blueprint for you and your collaborators. You can unlock better feedback, and you can design the best final product.
You want to avoid this:
After reading it over, I noticed that it was a little rough around the edges and could easily be improved quite a bit. Another factor of my essay that should be touched upon as well would be my overall incorporation of the documents into my essential question. My analysis of the documents themselves was weak, and I found that I didn’t use them to my full advantage to help prove my argument. (Total length of reflection: ≈200 words)
And this:
I thought my essay was great, and I handed it in disappointed in my score as has been the routine in this class. When I went back into my essay for revision, I didn’t really change anything major, but I edited a number of errors I found in the grammatical bowels of the language, and changed some words and phrases here and there that I thought were lost in meaning. (Total length of reflection: ≈300 words)
Instead, you want to reflect and be metacognitive like this:
The first error to correct was the reference to “bumps in the road”. From this reference I immediately jumped into a scenario with a zombie apocalypse, making the connection weak and illogical to the reader. So, I reworded the third sentence and then added in another sentence to build the degree of trouble from a small obstacle to total destruction. Also, I added in another sentence after introducing the idea of a zombie apocalypse to better preface the Braunbeck quote. Finally, I fixed the penultimate sentence in the first paragraph in order to clarify my ideas. (Total length of reflection: ≈1500 words)
Or this:
I decided to revisit the topic of appearance-changing technology that I touched upon in the introduction, and have the new paragraph focus on how appearance is important in society, sometimes more so than the mind is. This may seem silly, but I wanted to hear other’s ideas so I asked my essential question at dinner to see what my family thought. My mom instantly brought up appearance and my dad said that recent presidents have been consistently taller than their competitive candidates during their elections. I gathered that I was on the right track as my ideas matched up with others, and also decided to research the pattern my dad had discussed. Then the question came up as to if I should cite statistical information that I find on the internet. Should I? (Total length of reflection: ≈900 words)
The weaker examples could be about any paper and any prompt. They require collaborators to dig up the original draft, to read it again, and then to compare each sentence to the equivalent sentence in the revision.
More importantly, weak reflection and metacognition does not help you, the writer, to improve. It is perfunctory. In our makerspace, there is no benefit to perfunctory self-analysis, as you can see in the step-by-step guide to grade abatement: tinyurl.com/step-by-step-gap.
What you want, instead, is actionable insight into how you learn. You want to learn something about how you learn that improves you, or that deepens a strength, or that cuts out a weakness.
You should note that this focus on metacognition is as old as education itself, and that one of the quotations on the front page of this site emphasizes this:
We may take as our guide here John Dewey’s observation that the content of a lesson is the least important thing about learning. As he wrote in Experience and Education: “Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only what he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes… may be and often is more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history… For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future.” In other words, the most important thing one learns is always something about how one learns. As Dewey wrote in another place, we learn what we do.
~Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
