Using Metacognitive Strategies in the STEM Field

Too often, we teach students what to think but not how to think. This quote embodies the concept of metacognition and its importance to student learning. Students frequently do not use learning techniques to truly learn information and develop long-term understanding of the curriculum at hand. Instead they memorize information for exams without understanding the depth of what they have studied. This in turn can create a pseudo-understanding of the curriculum. The metacognitive strategies we teach students allow them to become good learners. In this chapter we discuss the relationships between metacognition and critical thinking, problem solving, motivation, and academic performance. Specifically, the STEM area of mathematics is discussed. The chapter brings together multiple perspectives on metacognition and the importance of engaging students in metacognitive activities and strategies to improve learning outcomes.

Conceptual Framework for Non-Algorithmic Education in STEAM Education

This chapter is based on a theoretical study of reflexivity, as a non-algorithmic method for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematic (STEAM Education). It explores the key shift in artistic education, embracing the role of scientific and artistic knowledge, knowledge development as an inner experience, importance of art for spiritual intelligence, as well as the philosophical and psychological dimensions of metacognition (as thinking about thinking). The focus in this chapter is related on understanding the complexity of reflexivity and the impact of metacognition within development of the artistic competence. Finally, the methodological research provides a conceptual framework that is important for learning design of non-algorithmic education.

Student's Psychological Factors and Metacognitive Skills in Higher Education

Metacognitive skills are a fundamental condition for the academic success of contemporary higher education students living in a knowledge-based society with abundant information, dynamic changes, and instant communication technologies. Although a student might have these skills in their repertoire, there are particular factors that might influence applying them during learning process, like: intrinsic motivation for the task, deeper processing learning strategies or having high executive control functions. The present chapter focuses on a few relevant psychological conditions of the student that might influence usage of metacognitive skills during learning in higher education. The author uses an interdisciplinary conceptual lens that brings together constructs from different theoretical perspectives in cognitive and educational psychology. A cross-sectional study was conducted to test the correlations and predictive power of the following constructs: learning strategies, motivation and executive functions on metacognitive skills, using a sample of 135 Romanian students.

Facebook Discussion to Enhance English Learners' Metacognitive Strategies

The present study aims to investigate the effect of Facebook discussion on EFL learners' metacognitive strategy application. Various language learning strategies suggested in many studies have a positive and significant influence on learners' academic accomplishment. However, there is little research on how to promote the learners' learning strategy applications through the assistance of social networking. Social networking has been drawing huge attention in different research fields. Especially in higher education, it has been applied to promote learning, interaction, and engagement. Thus, in this study, 83 EFL college learners are recruited to participate in the Facebook discussion for the purpose of examining whether learning contexts would have an influence on learners' strategy applications, especially the metacognitive strategies. After a semester's study, the participants in the Facebook discussion group reported to apply more metacognitive strategies and most of them have positive attitudes towards the Facebook-assisted discussion.

Development of Metacognition in Higher Education

Metacognition promotes critical and creative thinking, enabling an individual to generate more options to problem solutions, better judgments and decision makings. It is thus, the key success factor for dealing with academic, career and life challenges. Although it can be improved through teaching, explicit teaching of metacognition is not prevalent in higher education as it is often assumed that metacognition is already acquired through previous educational experiences. This assumption may be true for some but lacking in others as both knowledge disseminators (teachers) and recipients (learners) are unable to access and assess their own thinking processes to optimize their thinking efficiency. As a consequence, there are learners in higher education who do not develop their full potential. The aim of this paper is to discuss the concepts in metacognition and strategies that can be adopted to promote the development of metacognition among higher education learners.

Metacognition in Higher Education

Globalization forces Higher Education to adopt metacognition towards successful learning strategies for teacher training, students' learning and content(s) development. Researchers and practitioners use metacognition to study principles of educational system(s), learning environment(s), open content(s), and all possible processes (e.g. metacognitive, psycho-motoric, didactic, assessment etc.). Existing efforts can be divided into three categories: 1) separate strategy and tactics; 2) a holistic integration of strategy in existing successful practices, and 3) frontier research in university pedagogy. This chapter explores the third way. Within the context of the interest in metacognition and successful learning strategies in higher education, the chapter critically explores the 21st century theory and practice of the academic learning and synthesis responses to the following research questions: What is the correlation between theory and practice in Higher Education? What models are required? The conclusion is provided and future research directions are emphasized.

Metacognition of Organization Members as the Basis of Learning Strategy in Higher School

The concept of metacognition is used to study knowledge of knowledge, and mainly in cognitive psychology. According to the content; metacognition is an intelligent process related to memory, reflection and motivation. The problem, we research, concerns the fact that the content and the mismatch of employees views can lead to non-constructive activity that violates the effectiveness of an organization as a whole. The outcome of this study is a model that describe the characteristics of the organization through determination of the metacognitive skills of employees at different levels. The model takes into account the emotional colouring, different levels of metacognition inconsistency, characteristic of the organization effectiveness and various inconsistencies of metacognitions.

Academic Learning Between Cognition and Metacognition

The interest towards the quality of school-bound and academic learning in the new formal and informal education environments has significantly increased in modern research data from psychology of education, education sciences and neuro epistemology. Relevant issues consistently pop up on the agenda of international organizations and within the decision makers responsible for the sustainable future of new generations of pupils as well as young people. Learning competency and efficient self-management at EU level paradigm cannot disregard curricular values. Hence, there is a need for examining the current context, the stage reached in the reference domain and in certain prestigious scientific research, whose impact is either direct or indirect on the understanding, valorization, and optimization of pupils' and/or students' learning. The arguments invoked are in connection to the nature of challenges waiting for answers, the quality of certain working hypotheses and the ecological validity of empirical research results.

Metacognition and Metacognitive Skills

The chapter incorporated the theoretical issues of metacognition, the correlation between metacognition and intellect, and the interconnection of metacognitive skills and intellectual development. A resolution is reached about the importance of purposeful development of students' intellectual skills. In order to develop students' intellectual skills in the educational process authors developed an Intellectual Skills Development Technology. The results of an empirical experiment are given proving the effectiveness of the offered technology in students' intellectual skills development. The study of connection the intellectual skills outlined in this chapter and the critical thinking is of major interest. Future research will be focused on determining the pedagogical methods of critical thinking development and assessing the effectiveness of these methods.

Metacognition in the Teaching of Literature

In this chapter the problems of metacognition in the teaching of literature is considered. Artistic text is understood as a learning problem or assumption of developing cognitive and reading skills and the acquisition of literary terms in lower secondary education. Depending on the specific objectives of the analysis and interpretation of a literary text in the context of didactic communication and in accordance with the ambition to develop thinking and ability to learn, the author suggests teaching strategies and methods that participate in the processing and development of (factual, conceptual, procedural, metacognitive) knowledge of literary science, especially at higher levels of cognitive thinking.