Making Meta-Learning Explicit

One thing that separates humans from animals is our capability for thinking about our own learning, or meta-learning. While philosophically and psychologically of interest, it also has practical import. We can monitor, and consequently improve, the way we think and learn.

Students who reflect on how they learn “take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them,” writes John Bransford in How People Learn.

Reflection is usually accomplished by listening to the internal dialogue within one’s head. When experts were asked to repeat what was going through their minds while learning, they described linking new understandings to old, searching for missing pieces when confronted with mental puzzles, and other active processes. 

Because our inner voices are rarely shared, their thinkers don’t receive direct feedback from others. One’s internal dialogue may be inappropriate, illogical, narrow-minded and/or culturally biased, yet never stand corrected. Learners may not realize they have the power to shape the voice that columnist Herb Caen used to call the “drunken monkey.”

The fellows of the Meta-Learning Lab consider it particularly valuable for learners to “get to know themselves” by telling others how they’re thinking. Bransford relates that, “Reciprocal teaching, for example, is a technique designed to improve students' reading comprehension by helping them explicate, elaborate, and monitor their understanding as they read.”

Facilitators can accelerate the discovery process by modeling their personal strategies for learning new material, solving problems, and allocating their time and effort. Different subjects call for different approaches to learning. Questions that lead to understanding physics differ from those for learning written composition or history, or math problems – although meta-learning has improved performance in all of these subjects.

Educators and trainers have invested countless hours in testing, certification, curriculum, and classrooms: the external aspects of learning. Isn’t it high time to leverage the internal aspects of learning?

Inspiration:

How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice by M. Suzanne Donovan, John D. Bransford, and James W. Pellegrino, editors