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According to Halter (n.d.), metacognition is shaving awareness and knowledge of your own individual thinking processes, as well as having strategies and skills to evaluate thinking processes, to monitor progress. To be an effective teacher, one must be open to metacogntion and the willingness to have an open mind in learning new strategies. To do this, teachers can undergo two types of practices, Reflective teaching and Personal/Professional Development, each with their own counter parts to engage teachers in metacognitive practices to enhance their own teaching skills. The goal in the classroom is to optimise student learning, to encourage them to learn and to ensure that students are performing within the classroom to the best of this ability (Atkins & Brown, 2001).
Reflective Teaching Reflective teaching is the ability to look back on the lesson to determine what worked and what didn't. It means that teachers need to have an open mind and be able to question their own perspectives, thus encouraging metacognition. |
Reflective Teaching Outside the Lesson
Stewart Smith, a Graduate Teacher, has shared his ideas on how to be a reflective teacher with the help of other mechanisms not necessarily on a lesson-by-lesson basis:
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Discussions with other staff members to share techniques on teaching. This sometimes makes you question what you are doing vs. what other teachers are doing in the same area, and the results you each get. You may find that implementing an amalgamation of strategies optimises student learning. To do this, you need to be able to objectively look back on what you are doing in order to adequately reflect on your teaching.
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Keeping a diary to reflect back on, as this may help you to determine if there is a pattern as to how you teach vs. how students learn.
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Engage in Professional Development in order to learn new techniques to implement. This enables teachers to keep up to date with teaching practices, learn new teaching practices and question the way that they teach at the moment. It can include aspects such as Behavioural Management Strategies. Reflection helps you think back to what you do, while you are learning new strategies, and think of ways you can implement what you have been taught into your current practices.
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Allowing other teachers to observe and comment: Most teachers undergo Performance Management with the help of a teacher of higher authority. The purpose of this is to, between the teacher and observing teacher, determine improvements in teaching mechanisms in order to optimse student learning. It is important to be reflective here in order to get an accurate view of where you are going wrong and what you can do to improve.
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It sometimes helps to get feedback from the students as to how you are going. Although they may not always give you adequate feedback (for example, demanding freddo's for good behaviour), you can generally use things said as a method of feedback and then reflect upon your teaching in order to determine how you could change things.
The whole idea is to be open to suggestions and ideas, as well as creating them on your own, that make you think about your teaching strategies and mindful that you may have to make some changes in order to optimise student learning (S.Smith, personal communication, August 01, 2009).
Professional/Personal Development In order to optimse student learning, some teachers may undergo professional and/or personal development (Marsh, 2004), another mechanism to encourage metacognition. |
How does this pertain to effective teaching in the year 2010 and beyond?
Steer (2007) suggested that teachers need to be aware of the generation in which they are teaching, because as times change needs of the students change. Without Reflective Teaching Practices and Professional/Personal Development as metacognitive practices, teachers will not be able to adapt thinking processes to support the needs of the students. Therefore, by engaging in Refective Teaching Practices and Professional/Personal Development, teachers have the students best interests at heart, both collectively and individually, with the goal to optimise learning in the society today rather than keeping everything in the dark ages where students had their noses constantly in books. Teachers now have the mechanisms to reflect on activities and combat areas of concern, or use them to identify students that may have learning difficulties, as well as staying abreast of teaching practices that will optimise student learning.
