Taking a Metacognitive Approach to Learning
This guide takes a metacognitive approach to education in general and civil discourse in particular. Metacognition is characterized by an ongoing awareness of one’s own process and a willingness to make adjustments (Scharff & Draeger, 2015). For example, it encourages us to identify barriers to good decision-making (bias, blind-spots, rogue emotions) and develop strategies to keep us on track (checking-in to see that emotions are properly calibrated and decisions are made with considered judgment and not prejudice). Metacognition can help us navigate a complex decision-making landscape and contribute to more informed choices as participants in public discourse.
Research on Metacognition
Research suggests that students with gains in metacognition show improvements in a wide variety of skills, including reading comprehension (Dabarera et al. 2014), writing ability (Negritti, 2012), problem-solving (Hargrove & Nietfeld, 2015), study skills (Thiede et al. 2003; Mynlieff et al. 2014), exam performance (Iaacson & Fujita, 2006), and perseverance (Wolters & Hussain (2015). The benefits of metacognition can also be found in legal education (Gundlach & Santangelo, 2022; Lee, 2019; Niedwiecki, 2012) and in the cultivation of ethical reasoning (Theisen & Germar, 2024; Osorio & Reyes, 2023; Vega & Matta, 2022). Metacognition works because it encourages regular check-ins. If satisfactory progress is not being made, then it points the way to the appropriate adjustments.
Being metacognitive about Civic Discourse
Building support for metacognition can strengthen support for a wide-variety of skills at the heart of public discourse. As with any other skill, developing the wherewithal to constructively engage in public discourse requires practice (practice, practice). Towards that end, this site offers multiple opportunities for practice across multiple modalities.
As you’ll see in the sample exercises, there are resources available for daily, weekly, and monthly opportunities for practice. Some instructors might choose to use these exercises as “plug-and-play” into existing course materials. Others might choose to adapt these exercises to best fit their own course content, disciplinary leanings, or the needs of particular students. In either case, the exercises here offer plenty of opportunities to tailor materials to the needs of each situation.
Something for everyone
The hope is that there is something here for everyone, though not everything will be appropriate for every situation. Some of you will make a series of small tweaks to your existing courses. Some might be looking for a more dramatic overhaul. Others might decide to formulate a multi-semester implementation plan in which you include some new elements now with a plan to integrate additional elements in the near future. You’re encouraged to take what is most useful and adapt for your own purposes. If there are elements that do not fit (or do not yet fit) your plan for course delivery, then feel free to revisit them at a later time or set them aside altogether.
It’ll take all of us
Not every course needs to consider “hot button” issues, but most every course could talk about build capacity for transferable skills (like civic discourse). For example, most courses teach students to ask good questions about evidence, method, interpretations of findings, implications, and so forth. This points to curiosity, critical thinking, and managing information. Likewise, we might look at the ways that we approach inquiry with an open-mind.
I’ve never met an academic that thought all the important questions were settled. We are all in it for the joy of discovery. The process is messy and the possibility of being mistaken is real. This points to humility. While not civic discourse per se, these skills are civic discourse adjacent and part of building a broad capacity for reasoned inquiry. If we can build capacity for these skills in as many places as possible, then students are more likely to have capacity for these skills when they participate in civic life.
On a related note, campus initiatives can feel like “add-ons” or “extras” unless we still the story early and often about why and how they are relevant. If students see the relevance across their fields of study, then the issue of something being “one more box to check” doesn’t come up in the same way.
Likewise, civic discourse will feel like a performative add-on unless it is explicitly integrated into the campus narrative and explicitly integrated within and across programs. Most courses can have something to say about ability to communicate about difficult problems (even if not overtly political ones). The more that these skills can be explicitly tied to learning across the curriculum, the more that students will recognize that it is happening all over the place, albeit in different ways owing to differences in disciplinary approaches to problems. In short, it’s a collective effort.