Siegesmund, Amy (2017). “Using self-assessment to develop metacognition and self-regulated learners.” FEMS Microbiology Letters. 364(11). https://academic.oup.com/femsle/article/364/11/fnx096/3814095
Siegesmund’s commentary provides advocacy for the idea of self-assessment among students. She identifies other skills, such as self-regulation (1) as hallmarks of a student who is able to successfully assess his/her work. She expresses the self-assessment in four stages: Assess, Evaluate, Plan, and Monitor. At each stage, certain questions are a part of the exploration. The questions are generally reflective in nature. “Assess” is actually a definitional stage. “Evaluate” refers to the preparation necessary to make a positive change. “Plan” is the engagement of resources. “Monitor” is truly an assessment of the successes/failures of the implementation. The model clearly refers to a perpetual cycle of development overtime by reactivating the process to either enhance the successes or resolve the aspects which did not work. The increased metacognition creates an empowering skill for learners to “think like a scientist” (3). The author encourages educators to include other metacognitive processes, such as “exam wrappers” (3) to take the experience of an exam in a skill-building direction by immediately connecting the behaviors prior to the test with test performance to internalize the direct outcome of the study habits and resources, in order to improve results on future exams. Other metacognitive activities included 1) increasing student buy-in; 2) using learning objectives; and 3) reflective journaling.
The approach lends itself to students who work toward incremental improvement through iterative design augmentation. In fact, the labels on the stages could essentially be replaced by the IB/MYP Design Cycle model or the Stanford Design Thinking method (with the exception of the introductory emotive step on the pathway to the solution, which might be helpful to add to Siegesmund’s model). While the stages are neither revolutionary nor presented in great detail, the reminder that these reflective and metacognitive techniques, appropriately timed can develop resilience, self-regulation, and lifelong learning skills is important.
As a classroom teacher, I find this technique to be of value with my own students and, quite honestly, separates the A/B students from the C/D students. It takes the engagement, the follow-up, and the reflection of metacognition to push toward next-level understandings and avoid idling with what we know, what is comfortable, and what we always do. Repetitive cycling on the same practices does not lead to innovation. Learning requires a growth mindset in order to process new data and fit it into the cognitive structures of the brain. Metacognition allows the student to make a choice to, in the terms of a builder, “create an addition” or to “build out” when our current cognitive framework will not accommodate the new capacity needed. Simply knocking down a wall is not effective, nor is adding more “furniture” to a full building. Metacognition allows wise decisions and self-assessment informs those decisions.
Teacher Takeaways
Self-regulated learners utilize metacognition and self-assessment to recognize areas of growth and potential areas of development to improve facility with new material.
EmpowerED 