Research Summary Topic Metacognition Nurturing gifted student s metacognitive awareness effects of training in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous classes Authors Kelly Shepherd Lannie Kanevsky Roeper Review May June 99 21 4 p 266 Introduction Grouping students by ability is a common practice costs and benefits of this practice yet to be known Past studies have maintained higher ability students benefit more from use of metacognitive strategies Introduction Advocates say gifted students must interact with other students to benefit from their education Vygotsky s theory indicates students must interact with their more able peers when developing metacognition Purpose See if gifted children and special students would differ in their responses to metacognitive awareness training Strategies relied heavily on peer interaction Clarifying Terminology Homogeneous refers to the similarities in thinking abilities of the students Heterogeneous refers to the fact the students varied in their ability but were similar in others areas such as interests SES personality etc Clarifying Terminology Metacognition Brown Awareness and regulation of thinking processes students exercise in deliberate learning problem solving situations 4 Types of Metacognitive Processes at work during learning Knowing what you know and don t know Predicting the accuracy of cognitive acts in advance of responding Planning a sequence of strategic activities Checking monitoring the outcome of an attempt Research Questions Will the training be effective Will the range of ability in each class affect what was learned Will this range of ability affect the gifted students participation in group discussion Methods Participants 39 ten to eleven year olds 26 in regular heterogeneous 5th grade classroom 13 homogeneous in private school admission requirements 95 percentile on intelligence testing 3 gifted students in 94th percentile of Raven s Standard Progressive Matrices given pseudonyms Paula Brian Wayne Teacher researcher Provided the metacognitive awareness instruction 20 years of teacher experience 3 years as language arts consultant professional preparation workshops and coursework as teacher for gifted students Activities Children represented their metacognitive activities by using the analogy Mind is like a machine for their problem solving process Activities Asked to draw and describe the machine which represents how their mind works when it solves problems When I m my mind and It s like a A drawing of a thought cloud above the child s head was the frame of illustration of the mind machine Activities A different problems was posed each day including Doing hard math problems Writing a poem Deciding how to illustrate a story Choosing a topic for a research project in social studies Trying to convince parents to raise their allowance Interview 9 open ended questions to measure post intervention awareness of their thoughts feelings 1 If you wanted to explain metacognition to a friend what would you say 2 Do you use the same kinds of thinking in a different situations Please give an example 3 Did you learn some things about metacognition from your classmates Please give some examples 4 Have you learned something new about how your mind works What have you learned 5 Would you approach a learning situation differently now as compared to last week What is different Interview Questions cont d 6 Do you think metacognition could help friends of yours How 7 If you wanted to help someone think about their own thinking what would be the most important thing you would say 8 Did you enjoy the project What do you think of this metacognition stuff 9 Explain how these pictures are like you mind Results Each child s mind machine was distinctive 3 themes emerged in the data Changes in awareness Differences in metacognitive awareness Group differences Changes in Students Awareness Day 1 none had heard to term metacognition or to have thought about their thinking Day 5 students reported an awareness of the complexity of their thinking Before I just thought but now that I ve though about it I know how my mind works and I m not just passing thorough things I just thought I thought identical all the time I either knew something or I didn t Changes in the functions of the metaphorical machine Students demonstrated various actions the mind machine performed depending on the task Realizing Predicting None mentioned planning or monitoring Intra individual differences Students recognized they used different thinking on different tasks Within students they also used different phrases to describe the type of thinking they do It depends on the situation Inter individual differences Students recognized Everybody thinks about things in different ways a lot of people think in different ways and describe their thinking differently Differences b t homogeneous heterogeneous settings All students increased their awareness of executive functions Students in the homogeneous setting increased their awareness more When describing how their thinking had changes Students in the homogeneous group had more sophisticated and elaborate explanations Differences b t homogeneous heterogeneous settings Willingness to contribute to discussion Homogeneous group were more self directed engaged more spontaneously with peers into discussions Heterogeneous group less spontaneous fear of copying or being copied Discussion All intellectually gifted students benefited from the training activities Teacher researcher acted as more capable peer by leading the changes in instruction They came to appreciate task and person variables that influence problem solving They became able to talk about their thinking Discussion The leap frogging of ideas in the gifted group may be spontaneous scaffolding not present in the heterogeneous group Ability level of students may have effected their participation Social interactions may have been influenced by prior relationships and teaching environments The End
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