Here is a post from…Darlene M. Bassett
I am an educational consultant, specializing in literacy/thinking strategies and school change. My experience is K-12. If you are interested in contacting me, I can be reached at bestpracticesintl@gmail.com or by calling 207-377-3628.
http://dbassett.blogspot.com/2015/01/producing-lifelong-learners-is-approach.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ReflectionsOnMeta-cognition-ForEducatorsByEducators+%28Reflections+on+Meta-cognition+-+For+Educators+by+Educators%29
Taken From a post on ASCD By Kelly Morgan Dempewolf, PhD
How to Move from Teaching Content to Teaching Learning
“Lifelong learners. It’s a phrase that appears in mission statements of schools, districts, and state agencies across the country. It’s a worthy goal—to produce people that continue to learn and value learning throughout their adult lives….”
One suggestion Dempewolf offers is “the ability to try again.” Here are a few of her comments:
“Student-paced mastery learning also allows students to develop perhaps the most necessary skill for independent lifelong learning: the ability to try again. Traditional classrooms teach students that they have one opportunity to learn something and demonstrate their understanding. They are not taught to pick themselves up, think about what they could do differently, and attack the problem from a new angle….”
Dempewolf suggests that “teaching” learn to learn skills takes time! She notes a difference in these skills from the beginning to the end of the school year in her classroom.
Teaching Content and Teaching Learning
While a teacher can emphasize, support, or “teach” these meta skills, I believe that learning to learn skills DO need to be learned in the context of specific content. It is not clear, yet, whether learning to learn skills generalize across content areas. Ideally, new research will address this question. Perhaps middle school teachers, who often teach two subject areas, are in a good position to address this question of generalization of meta skills across content areas.
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