I had a hard time understanding the key differences between the three different categories of metacognitive knowledge types: person knowledge, task knowledge, and strategy knowledge. Also, the meaning of “introspection” with younger children was confusing to me. I sort of understand it, but not enough to actually use it when creating real-life applicable examples.
Involving metacognitive knowledge and regulation my band/orchestra ensembles:
*Person Knowledge: I would spend a few days each semester to stray from our routine concert music, to spend time sight-reading a bunch of music from all kinds of levels of difficulty. But each piece must mostly contain qualities that challenge the specific aspects of playing as an individual, and within an ensemble. These aspects include intonation, embouchure endurance, finger technique, breathing techniques, stylistic knowledge, etc.). These pieces should NOT be pieces that are performed frequently in general, just to make sure the students haven’t already worked on it somewhere in their past. This activity has forced the students to understand their own capabilities at different aspects of playing their instrument, which leads to self-monitoring.
*Egocentrism will definitely be present in my band/orchestra ensembles, and is a special case of metacognition due to the students’ adolescence. According to Piaget, egocentrism is a negative consequence that forms as the student moves into formal operational thinking. Students at this age have an unknowingly hard time realizing fully that other people have different perspectives and thoughts than the student, and the student believes that everyone else should/will agree with their opinions and feelings. Although egocentrism can be positive in some ways, it has negative effects in the music classroom and practicing. In band/orchestra, it’s not only about an individual’s playing ability, but major teamwork ultimately. I must help the students work on reversing their egocentrism as much as possible by making them consider other ensemble players’ opinions on how the musical style should sound, who is more in tune than others, and being able to adjust to other players’ stylistic applications and intonation. I must politely, but continuously, tell the less-interested students that other students in the ensemble may care more about the quality of the ensemble than they do. Necessary sacrifices must be made for the greater good of the ensemble’s quality-of-sound as a whole.
There is some critical thinking and problem solving required to play successfully in a band/orchestra. An example of a well-defined problem that provides steps to achieve the goal (algorithm): when given a new piece of music to learn on their instrument, a student must identify then analyze the difficulties within the piece; then they mentally recall the steps that are required to achieve the goal of solving the specific difficulty, assuming that I as the teacher has provided steps to take to solve difficulties with different aspects of playing. Metacognition is probably used more in band/orchestra than critical thinking, and an example is the example of person knowledge mentioned earlier in this post.
Person knowledge is basically evaluating your strengths and weaknesses. It's "understanding your capabilities", as defined by the book- knowing what you're good at and what you're weak at. For example, for me, I'm really good at memorizing, but not very good at deep reading. That's person knowledge.
ReplyDeleteTask knowledge is how we perceive the task at hand - it's basically evaluating the difficulty. For example, "this paper has to be 10 pages long, so it will be difficult" or "this information we're learning is very complex, so the assignment will be hard and take a long time to figure out".
Strategy knowledge is figuring out what strategies to use for the task. So, when you're older (say high school), you can receive an assignment and know how to tackle it. If it's memorizing, for example, you know a good strategy would be to chunk the material or to come up with mnemonic devices. That's strategy knowledge.
• The three different categories of metacognitive knowledge (page 215) types:
ReplyDeleteo PERSON knowledge: knowledge about the PERSON performing the task.
I have to read two modules from the book and complete two blog posts over it. I am good at reading comprehension.
o TASK knowledge: knowledge about the TASK being performed.
Content: The modules cover metacognition, critical thinking and cognition.
Length: I am a slow reader. The module has 10 pages and a few pages of introduction and summary. I should expect to take an hour to read a module. I have to read two modules. I don’t know how long the second blog post will take unless I preview it. I should give myself no shorter than half an hour to do this. I should give myself two hours for my reading. It will probably take me half an hour to do the two blog posts, but I can’t be late, so I should start reading by 8 so I can have flexibility to be done with the assignment by 11.
Type of assignment: This is a reading assignment. I have to answer questions in two blog posts when I am done with the reading.
o STRATEGY knowledge: knowledge about the STRATEGIES that can be used to perform the task.
These strategies work well for me: I can highlight the text in different colors. I can read either aloud or to myself. I will read aloud if I’m having trouble focusing or don’t understand the material.
I do not need to take notes of the content.
• Introspection (page 217) means that the children are aware of and understand their thought.
o We often think without realizing it. Kids don’t realize what they are thinking about or what others may be thinking about.
I’m barely thinking about where these keys are or what they feel like as I type. A child would say that they are not thinking about where these keys are or what they feel like as they type (assuming they took a typing class like I did). They would argue that I’m not thinking about what I’m typing. (Okay, so it’s difficult to put this example into a kid’s perspective. Let’s try something else.)
Children may believe that people know when they are being bad. People may not understand what is considered to be bad behavior. (Okay, so I couldn’t put this into as good of an example as the book does with sleep. I’m sorry.)
Kids may not be thinking about important parts of reading comprehension. They could have trouble with a quiz because they are thinking about him eating breakfast in his kitchen, but they are not thinking about him being in his home.