LESSON 1: METACOGNITION
Metacognition is the ability to "think about thinking," encompassing awareness and control of
one's own cognitive processes. It involves reflecting on, evaluating, and regulating cognitive
activities like decision-making, memory, and learning. Essentially, it's about understanding how
you learn and using that understanding to improve your learning strategies.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
Awareness of thinking:
Metacognition involves recognizing your own strengths and weaknesses as a learner,
understanding how you learn best, and being aware of your current knowledge and
understanding.
Regulation of thinking:
This aspect focuses on actively monitoring your learning process, planning your
approach to a task, adjusting your strategies as needed, and evaluating your
performance.
Examples of metacognitive skills:
Planning: Deciding how to approach a learning task, setting goals, and
allocating time and resources effectively.
Monitoring: Checking your understanding as you work, identifying areas where
you're struggling, and adjusting your approach accordingly.
Evaluating: Assessing your final performance, reflecting on what worked well
and what could be improved, and using this feedback to inform future
learning.
Importance of metacognition:
Developing metacognitive skills is crucial for effective learning and problem-solving. It
empowers individuals to become more strategic, self-directed learners who can adapt
to new challenges and optimize their learning process.
The American Psychological Associations 14 Learner-Centered Psychological Principles
LESSON 2: LEARNER-CENTERED PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES
The following 14 psychological principles pertain to the learner and the learning process 1. They
focus on psychological factors that are primarily internal to and under the control of the learner
rather than conditioned habits or physiological factors. However, the principles also attempt to
acknowledge external environment or contextual factors that interact with these internal
factors.
The principles are intended to deal holistically with learners in the context of real-world
learning situations. Thus, they are best understood as an organized set of principles; no
principle should be viewed in isolation. The 14 principles are divided into those referring to
cognitive and metacognitive, motivational and affective, developmental and social, and
individual difference factors influencing learners and learning. Finally, the principles are
intended to apply to all learners — from children, to teachers, to administrators, to parents,
and to community members involved in our educational system.
Cognitive and Metacognitive Factors
1. Nature of the learning process. The learning of complex subject matter is most
effective when it is an intentional process of constructing meaning from
information and experience.
There are different types of learning processes, for example, habit formation in
motor learning; and learning that involves the generation of knowledge, or
cognitive skills and learning strategies. Learning in schools emphasizes the use of
intentional processes that students can use to construct meaning from
information, experiences, and their own thoughts and beliefs. Successful
learners are active, goal-directed, self-regulating, and assume personal
responsibility for contributing to their own learning. The principles set forth in
this document focus on this type of learning.
2. Goals of the learning process. The successful learner, over time and with
support and instructional guidance, can create meaningful, coherent
representations of knowledge.
The strategic nature of learning requires students to be goal directed. To
construct useful representations of knowledge and to acquire the thinking and
learning strategies necessary for continued learning success across the life span,
students must generate and pursue personally relevant goals. Initially, students’
short-term goals and learning may be sketchy in an area, but over time their
understanding can be refined by filling gaps, resolving inconsistencies, and
deepening their understanding of the subject matter so that they can reach
longer-term goals. Educators can assist learners in creating meaningful learning
goals that are consistent with both personal and educational aspirations and
interests.
3. Construction of knowledge. The successful learner can link new information
with existing knowledge in meaningful ways.
Knowledge widens and deepens as students continue to build links between new
information and experiences and their existing knowledge base. The nature of
these links can take a variety of forms, such as adding to, modifying, or
reorganizing existing knowledge or skills. How these links are made or develop
may vary in different subject areas, and among students with varying talents,
interests, and abilities. However, unless new knowledge becomes integrated
with the learner’s prior knowledge and understanding, this new knowledge
remains isolated, cannot be used most effectively in new tasks, and does not
transfer readily to new situations. Educators can assist learners in acquiring and
integrating knowledge by a number of strategies that have been shown to be
effective with learners of varying abilities, such as concept mapping and thematic
organization or categorizing.
4. Strategic thinking. The successful learner can create and use a repertoire of
thinking and reasoning strategies to achieve complex learning goals.
Successful learners use strategic thinking in their approach to learning,
reasoning, problem solving, and concept learning. They understand and can use
a variety of strategies to help them reach learning and performance goals, and to
apply their knowledge in novel situations. They also continue to expand their
repertoire of strategies by reflecting on the methods they use to see which work
well for them, by receiving guided instruction and feedback, and by observing or
interacting with appropriate models. Learning outcomes can be enhanced if
educators assist learners in developing, applying, and assessing their strategic
learning skills.
5. Thinking about thinking. Higher order strategies for selecting and monitoring
mental operations facilitate creative and critical thinking.
Successful learners can reflect on how they think and learn, set reasonable
learning or performance goals, select potentially appropriate learning strategies
or methods, and monitor their progress toward these goals. In addition,
successful learners know what to do if a problem occurs or if they are not making
sufficient or timely progress toward a goal. They can generate alternative
methods to reach their goal (or reassess the appropriateness and utility of the
goal). Instructional methods that focus on helping learners develop these higher
order (metacognitive) strategies can enhance student learning and personal
responsibility for learning.
6. Context of learning. Learning is influenced by environmental factors, including
culture, technology, and instructional practices.
Learning does not occur in a vacuum. Teachers play a major interactive role with
both the learner and the learning environment. Cultural or group influences on
students can impact many educationally relevant variables, such as motivation,
orientation toward learning, and ways of thinking. Technologies and instructional
practices must be appropriate for learners’ level of prior knowledge, cognitive
abilities, and their learning and thinking strategies. The classroom environment,
particularly the degree to which it is nurturing or not, can also have significant
impacts on student learning.
Motivational and Affective Factors
7. Motivational and emotional influences on learning. What and how much is
learned is influenced by the learner’s motivation. Motivation to learn, in turn,
is influenced by the individual’s emotional states, beliefs, interests and goals,
and habits of thinking.
The rich internal world of thoughts, beliefs, goals, and expectations for success
or failure can enhance or interfere with the learner’s quality of thinking and
information processing. Students’ beliefs about themselves as learners and the
nature of learning have a marked influence on motivation. Motivational and
emotional factors also influence both the quality of thinking and information
processing as well as an individual’s motivation to learn. Positive emotions, such
as curiosity, generally enhance motivation and facilitate learning and
performance. Mild anxiety can also enhance learning and performance by
focusing the learner’s attention on a particular task. However, intense negative
emotions (e.g., anxiety, panic, rage, insecurity) and related thoughts (e.g.,
worrying about competence, ruminating about failure, fearing punishment,
ridicule, or stigmatizing labels) generally detract from motivation, interfere with
learning, and contribute to low performance.
8. Intrinsic motivation to learn. The learner’s creativity, higher order thinking, and
natural curiosity all contribute to motivation to learn. Intrinsic motivation is
stimulated by tasks of optimal novelty and difficulty, relevant to personal
interests, and providing for personal choice and control.
Curiosity, flexible and insightful thinking, and creativity are major indicators of
the learners’ intrinsic motivation to learn, which is in large part a function of
meeting basic needs to be competent and to exercise personal control. Intrinsic
motivation is facilitated on tasks that learners perceive as interesting and
personally relevant and meaningful, appropriate in complexity and difficulty to
the learners’ abilities, and on which they believe they can succeed. Intrinsic
motivation is also facilitated on tasks that are comparable to real-world
situations and meet needs for choice and control. Educators can encourage and
support learners’ natural curiosity and motivation to learn by attending to
individual differences in learners’ perceptions of optimal novelty and difficulty,
relevance, and personal choice and control.
9. Effects of motivation on effort. Acquisition of complex knowledge and skills
requires extended learner effort and guided practice. Without learners’
motivation to learn, the willingness to exert this effort is unlikely without
coercion.
Effort is another major indicator of motivation to learn. The acquisition of
complex knowledge and skills demands the investment of considerable learner
energy and strategic effort, along with persistence over time. Educators need to
be concerned with facilitating motivation by strategies that enhance learner
effort and commitment to learning and to achieving high standards of
comprehension and understanding. Effective strategies include purposeful
learning activities, guided by practices that enhance positive emotions and
intrinsic motivation to learn, and methods that increase learners’ perceptions
that a task is interesting and personally relevant.
Developmental and Social
10. Developmental influences on learning. As individuals develop, there are
different opportunities and constraints for learning. Learning is most effective
when differential development within and across physical, intellectual,
emotional, and social domains is taken into account.
Individuals learn best when material is appropriate to their developmental level
and is presented in an enjoyable and interesting way. Because individual
development varies across intellectual, social, emotional, and physical domains,
achievement in different instructional domains may also vary. Overemphasis on
one type of developmental readiness–such as reading readiness, for example–
may preclude learners from demonstrating that they are more capable in other
areas of performance. The cognitive, emotional, and social development of
individual learners and how they interpret life experiences are affected by prior
schooling, home, culture, and community factors. Early and continuing parental
involvement in schooling, and the quality of language interactions and two-way
communications between adults and children can influence these developmental
areas. Awareness and understanding of developmental differences among
children with and without emotional, physical, or intellectual disabilities, can
facilitate the creation of optimal learning contexts.
11. Social influences on learning. Learning is influenced by social interactions,
interpersonal relations, and communication with others.
Learning can be enhanced when the learner has an opportunity to interact and
to collaborate with others on instructional tasks. Learning settings that allow for
social interactions, and that respect diversity, encourage flexible thinking and
social competence. In interactive and collaborative instructional contexts,
individuals have an opportunity for perspective taking and reflective thinking
that may lead to higher levels of cognitive, social, and moral development, as
well as self-esteem. Quality personal relationships that provide stability, trust,
and caring can increase learners’ sense of belonging, self-respect and self-
acceptance, and provide a positive climate for learning. Family influences,
positive interpersonal support and instruction in self-motivation strategies can
offset factors that interfere with optimal learning such as negative beliefs about
competence in a particular subject, high levels of test anxiety, negative sex role
expectations, and undue pressure to perform well. Positive learning climates can
also help to establish the context for healthier levels of thinking, feeling, and
behaving. Such contexts help learners feel safe to share ideas, actively
participate in the learning process, and create a learning community.
Individual Differences
12. Individual differences in learning. Learners have different strategies,
approaches, and capabilities for learning that are a function of prior experience
and heredity.
Individuals are born with and develop their own capabilities and talents. In
addition, through learning and social acculturation, they have acquired their own
preferences for how they like to learn and the pace at which they learn.
However, these preferences are not always useful in helping learners reach their
learning goals. Educators need to help students examine their learning
preferences and expand or modify them, if necessary. The interaction between
learner differences and curricular and environmental conditions is another key
factor affecting learning outcomes. Educators need to be sensitive to individual
differences, in general. They also need to attend to learner perceptions of the
degree to which these differences are accepted and adapted to by varying
instructional methods and materials.
13. Learning and diversity. Learning is most effective when differences in learners’
linguistic, cultural, and social backgrounds are taken into account.
The same basic principles of learning, motivation, and effective instruction apply
to all learners. However, language, ethnicity, race, beliefs, and socioeconomic
status all can influence learning. Careful attention to these factors in the
instructional setting enhances the possibilities for designing and implementing
appropriate learning environments. When learners perceive that their individual
differences in abilities, backgrounds, cultures, and experiences are valued,
respected, and accommodated in learning tasks and contexts, levels of
motivation and achievement are enhanced.
14. Standards and assessment. Setting appropriately high and challenging
standards and assessing the learner as well as learning progress — including
diagnostic, process, and outcome assessment — are integral parts of the
learning process.
Assessment provides important information to both the learner and teacher at
all stages of the learning process. Effective learning takes place when learners
feel challenged to work towards appropriately high goals; therefore, appraisal of
the learner’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses, as well as current knowledge
and skills, is important for the selection of instructional materials of an optimal
degree of difficulty. Ongoing assessment of the learner’s understanding of the
curricular material can provide valuable feedback to both learners and teachers
about progress toward the learning goals. Standardized assessment of learner
progress and outcomes assessment provides one type of information about
achievement levels both within and across individuals that can inform various
types of programmatic decisions. Performance assessments can provide other
sources of information about the attainment of learning outcomes. Self-
assessments of learning progress can also improve students self-appraisal skills
and enhance motivation and self-directed learning.
