Reflective Pedagogies and the Metacognitive Turn in College Teaching

Reflection and metacognition , the key terms of this book, have deeply intertwined histories in discourse on teaching and learning. In a general sense, interest in the two terms arises from the recognition that, in learning and in professional practice, content and procedural knowledge alone are insufficient for persistent and self-directed growth in a learner’s or practitioner’s understanding and expertise. Additionally, knowledge about how one learns content or practices a procedure is required. It is this attention to how that gives rise to the moment of reflexivity in reflection and the moment of meta in metacognition—that is, the moment of standing above or apart from oneself, so to speak, in order to turn one’s attention back upon one’s own mental work. In broad terms, then, reflection is often defined as a conscious exploration of one’s own experiences (see, for example, Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985 ), and metacognition as the act of thinking about one’s own thought processes (see Flavell, 1979 ). In the course of this chapter, I will aim to elaborate these initial definitions by placing them within the context of the educational trends and research out of which they developed, outline their connections to other important educational concepts, and overview the specific reflective and metacognitive pedagogical practices offered by the volume’s contributors.