What are you doing as you read this book? You almost certainly have a purpose in mind: You want to learn about strategy instruction. You might be underlining or high-lighting what you believe are important passages. You may stop and verbally para-phrase a section to yourself or make notes in the margins or a notebook. You might make connections or relate information to your personal experience or other bits of knowledge about instruction. You may be reading some sections more slowly, because the information is unfamiliar or difficult; however, you may breeze through others.
While you read, you are probably aware of how well you understand the material. If you realize that you are confused about something you just read, you will probably stop and review the section. You may have actually done some planning before you even began to read, if you allotted time to read the chapter. If you are reading the book for a class, you may have scheduled a time to reread or look at notes. In summary, you are doing much more than simply decoding printed words on a page. You are actively engaged with the learning task at a number of levels.
Students with LD would likely have a much different experience. They may have no particular purpose in mind when they read. Their main goal would be to simply “get through” the task. They would be unlikely to effectively use the activities that would help them retain the information (for example, highlighting or paraphrasing) or be aware of their degree of comprehension, much less use error correction techniques such as reread-ing. This type of unengaged performance isn’t limited to readreread-ing. It is typical of how stu-dents with LD perform many academic tasks. Often they will make glaring mistakes that seem so obvious that we wonder how they could be unaware of them.
Students with LD are not actively involved in the learning task due in large part to a problem with metacognition. Metacognition is defined as one’s knowledge concerning
TABLE 2.2. Tips for Changing Attributions
• Provide students with feedback that stresses effort and/or strategy use.
Effort: “Johnny, all that extra spelling practice you did paid off. You got a 96% on your spelling test.”
Strategy: “Helen, you really learned the long-division strategy well! You followed all the steps and you got all the problems correct!”
• If a student fails at a task, relate the failure to effort or strategy use.
Effort: “Well, Emma, your spelling score was only 52%. I noticed that this week you didn’t spend as much time practicing your words. I think that you need to spend extra time practicing.”
Strategy: “Hepzibah, I noticed that you missed six problems on your worksheet because you didn’t regroup correctly. If you remember the steps in the 4 B’s strategy you won’t forget to regroup. Would you like go over it again?”
• Teach children what it means to “really try.”
Discuss the meaning of effort. Effort means sticking with it, not giving up. Stress that effort is important to success, and that you should always give your best effort. Teach the difference between productive effort and just getting by. For many children just handing in work, regardless of quality, is perceived as effort.
• Show how effort can affect outcomes.
Link effort to success and learning. For example, have students chart the number of spelling practices and their weekly spelling scores. Show how increased practice relates to better spelling scores. Stress the relation between productive work and success. For example, children’s social studies grades improve because they worked really hard at getting all their assignments done well.
• Give students a strategy.
Give students a systematic means of completing a task—a strategy. Stress that using the strategy consistently and correctly will lead to success. Treat strategies like “tools”; stress that you can always add another “tool to your tool box.”
• Make “smart” a skill.
Stress that what makes you “smart” is the number of skills and strategies you have. You can’t change ability, but you can always learn more skills and strategies. You don’t learn things because you are “smart”; you learn because of instruction, strategies, and effort, and this makes you “smart.”
• Internalize responsibility for success and failure.
Through feedback and modeling stress that the reasons for success and failure are inside us. We succeed because we try hard and use the right strategy. If we fail, we didn’t put forth our best effort or use the right strategy. Note that to prevent failure, the teacher must ensure that child has the preskills to do the task and determine whether the child can do the task independently or with assistance.
one’s own cognitive processes and the products related to them (Flavel, 1979). Put more simply, metacognition means “thinking about thinking.” What is the difference be-tween cognition and metacognition? It is the difference bebe-tween knowing something and understanding knowledge in terms of awareness and appropriate use (Flavel, 1979). To help understand the distinction we can use an the example of a hammer:
Cognitive Metacognitive
“That’s a hammer.” “A hammer is a tool I’d use to drive a nail. There are different kinds of hammers for different jobs. You need to practice a little before you can use a hammer well. You need to be careful using a hammer or you can hurt yourself.”
As you can see, the metacognitive knowledge goes beyond the factual knowledge. It encompasses knowing (1) the purpose a hammer serves, (2) that it’s necessary to match the correct hammer to a given task (you wouldn’t use a sledge hammer to drive a nail), (3) that there is a skill set needed to use a hammer successfully, and (4) some monitor-ing is necessary when you use a hammer (if you don’t pay attention, you might end up with a very sore thumb!). The hammer example illustrates the importance of metacog-nition. Students without a metacognitive understanding of a task will obviously not function as well as those who do have such an understanding. This lack of metacogni-tive knowledge also contributes to a student’s frustration. There are three major com-ponents of metacognition: metacognitive knowledge, motivational beliefs, and the executive component, or self-regulation (Hacker, 1998).
Metacognitive knowledge refers to a person’s (1) acquired knowledge and beliefs about him- or herself as a learner, (2) task demands and how they can be met, and (3) strategies that can or should be used to accomplish a task (Flavell, 1979). Metacognitive knowledge also includes the relation between task and strategy (i.e., what strategies are appropriate to a given task) and a knowledge of how, when, where, and why to use strategy. For example:
Type of knowledge Example
Self as learner: This may include knowledge of your own capabilities, comparisons with others, and general knowledge of your cognition.
“I’m good at math but my spelling is terrible.”
“If I don’t write something down I’ll forget it.”
“My wife is better at math than I am.”
Task demands: This may include
knowledge of how different tasks place different demands, and how to approach a task appropriately.
Knowing that you read for detail differently than you would for the main idea.
Type of knowledge Example
Knowing that when you read a very dense and complex passage you need to slow down.
Strategy: This may include knowledge of what type of strategy (if any) is
appropriate for a task, knowledge of how best to strategically attack a given task, and knowledge that strategies enhance performance.
“A paraphrasing strategy will help my comprehension, but a mnemonic would be better to remember a list.”
“To write a better story I’ll use my Story Grammar strategy.”
“Using a strategy helps me do better.”
Motivational beliefs—which are related to attributions—also play a role in meta-cognition (Borkowski, Estrada, Milstead, & Hale, 1989). Students’ beliefs about their competence and control over outcomes can directly affect their choice of strategies and how long they will persist at a task (Bandura, 1993). If students lack confidence in their skills then they may not be able to use their skills effectively. In fact, some studies have shown that students’ belief in their abilities was a better predictor of positive attitudes toward academic tasks than actual ability (Bandura, 1993). Components of motiva-tional beliefs include:
• General competency—How good am I as a learner overall?
• Competency in specific task—How good am I at this specific task?
• Control over outcomes—Do I have control over how well I do?
• Causes of failure—Why did I succeed or fail (internal or external)?
• Benefits of strategy—Belief that a strategic approach is effective/superior.
Self-regulation (also referred to as executive processes) refers to how learners regu-late or manage cognitive and metacognitive processes. Self-regulation is critical for a number of reasons. First, effective learners are self-regulated learners (Butler & Winne, 1995). Students who actively regulate their cognition are more engaged in a task and typically perform better than those who don’t. Although self-regulation is complex and there are numerous cognitive and metacognitive activities that can be monitored, there are four commonly recognized self-regulation activities that are important for strategy instruction (e.g., Hacker, 1998). These include:
• Planning—adopting a deliberate, organized approach to a task, planning next moves.
• Monitoring—checking comprehension and strategy effectiveness, testing, revis-ing, and evaluating strategies, monitoring the effectiveness of attempts.
• Failure detection—“Are things going OK?”
• Failure correction—“Let’s fix it.”
Second, there is little use in teaching a strategy that students cannot use indepen-dently. For a strategy to be truly useful, students should be able to effectively use and maintain it without outside support or guidance. This level of self-regulation is con-cerned with maintaining effort and appropriate strategy use. It includes functions such as staying on task, blocking out or eliminating negative cognitions (“I can’t do this”), and consistently and correctly using a strategy.