In our recent Special Ed. Department meeting, we read an article pertaining to Metacognition as it relates to study strategies, motivation, and monitoring. Metacognition (thinking about thinking) also relates to Speech-Language Pathology, especially at the secondary level, as we teach students how to use educational learning strategies. Such strategies may include producing an outline, summarizing, predicting outcomes, identifying key words, and applying learned information to a real-life scenario or case.
Also at the secondary level, I often encounter the road block of motivation. As the article states, "Metacognition affects motivation because it affects attribution and self-efficacy." When a student experiences success, they tend to attribute that success to their ability and to the amount of effort put forth, which in turn promotes future success as it develops self-confidence. Conversely, students tend to attribute failure to a lack of ability, which reduces self-confidence and may contribute to the self-fulfilling prophecy of repeated failure. As a defense mechanism, students may then reduce the amount of effort put forth, in order to prevent feeling as though their failure is attributed only to lack of ability. This may be especially prevalent with students in Special Education.
As a result of processing this information, my first plan of attack will be to provide each student with ownership over his/her goals and objectives in speech therapy. Each student will be presented with the following questions: What are your goals? Why do you think these goals were chosen? How will we accomplish these goals? Will accomplishing these goals in speech therapy help you in other environments, such as in the classroom?
As students begin to see the connection between their speech/language goals and generalization into other environments, I hope to build their self-confidence and expand their knowledge of educational learning strategies, as well as their knowledge of compensation strategies when presented with a challenge. This article has shown me the ways that Metacognition is linked to study strategies, motivation, and self-monitoring.
Source: http://academic.pgcc.edu/~wpeirce/MCCCTR/metacognition.htm
