Rethinking Thinking About Thinking: Against a Pedagogical Imperative to Cultivate Metacognitive Skills

<p>In summaries of “best practices” for pedagogy, one typically encounters enthusiastic advocacy for <em>metacognition. </em>Some researchers assert that the body of evidence supplied by decades of education studies indicates a clear pedagogical imperative: that if one wants their students to learn well, <em>one must implement teaching practices that cultivate students’ metacognitive skills.</em></p> <p><em></em>In this dissertation, I counter that education research does not impose such a mandate upon instructors. We lack sufficient and reliable evidence from studies that use the appropriate research design to validate the efficacy of metacognitive skill-building interventions (not just evaluate their relationship to learning outcomes). I argue that improved academic outcomes following these interventions aren’t necessarily mediated by increased metacognitive skills; rather, enhanced student performance can be accounted for by other factors that accompany metacognitive training, particularly the explicit provision of<em> </em>domain-specific knowledge.</p> <p>On the way to this conclusion, I elaborate some complications and controversies surrounding “metacognition.” This is a sprawling and nebulous construct, which makes generalizations about its pedagogical value dubious from the outset. Moreover, it is unclear the extent to which the end goal of metacognitive skill-building (cognitive self-mastery, involving knowledge of and control over our own minds) is even possible, given our mental architecture; some cognitive scientists allege that we are subject to phenomenological illusions which make this seem more achievable than it actually is.</p> <p>I also attempt to provide an account of how metacognitive skill-building could receive glowing endorsements from educators and education researchers, even though its conceptual and empirical underpinnings are flimsy. The error theory I offer identifies two major factors that may foster belief in the efficacy of metacognitive training: <em>goalpost-shifting</em> around the objective of such efforts, and <em>motivated reasoning </em>in defense of the desirable conclusion that educators can significantly reshape students’ minds and unlock their intellectual potential through simple pedagogical interventions.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Philosophy

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• Alpert, Lauren R

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Eric Mandelbaum

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Michael Brownstein
• Elizabeth Edenberg
• Barbara Montero

• Cognitive Psychology
• Curriculum and Instruction
• Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research
• Educational Psychology
• Philosophy
• Philosophy of Mind
• metacognition
• pedagogy
• skill-building
• education research
• evidence-based
• cognitive science

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4301

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-5359