Research has identified the importance of helping students develop the
ability to monitor their own comprehension and to make their thinking
processes explicit, and indeed demonstrates that metacognitive teaching
strategies greatly improve student engagement with course material.
This book -- by presenting principles that teachers in higher education
can put into practice in their own classrooms -- explains how to lay the
ground for this engagement, and help students become self-regulated
learners actively employing metacognitive and reflective strategies in
their education.
Key elements include embedding metacognitive instruction in the content
matter; being explicit about the usefulness of metacognitive activities
to provide the incentive for students to commit to the extra effort; as
well as following through consistently.
Recognizing that few teachers have a deep understanding of metacognition
and how it functions, and still fewer have developed methods for
integrating it into their curriculum, this book offers a hands-on,
user-friendly guide for implementing metacognitive and reflective
pedagogy in a range of disciplines.
Offering seven practitioner examples from the sciences, technology,
engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, the social sciences and the
humanities, along with sample syllabi, course materials, and student
examples, this volume offers a range of strategies for incorporating
these pedagogical approaches in college classrooms, as well as
theoretical rationales for the strategies presented.
By providing successful models from courses in a broad spectrum of
disciplines, the editors and contributors reassure readers that they
need not reinvent the wheel or fear the unknown, but can instead adapt
tested interventions that aid learning and have been shown to improve
both instructor and student satisfaction and engagement.
