Metacognition

 April 12 Word of the Day: Metacognition

 

At lunch today it was reported, via the most reliable sources, that our universe has as many as two trillion galaxies. It’s ours, but in what sense do we own it? Another word that floated into view over mushroom quiche was metacognition, which is to say thinking about thinking. Teachers need to be in possession of such things, the current shape of our universe and thinking about how we are thinking, in advance. As surely as day follows night, the classroom is ready to manage. There are pupils of all ages who, even today, are happy to believe there is at most, one galaxy and maybe a few others. They could care less about pushing the boundaries of the Milky Way. They are tacit learners. If a stargazer told them there are maybe two trillion and that’s just in this universe, tacits would take on this knowledge with equanimity and possibly never think about it again. After all, one galaxy or two trillion, there’s nothing we can do about it. Then there are aware learners, aware that is they are standing on our unique planet gazing out at immense star patterns, many of them so far away they are invisible. Awares might put down their knife and fork for a moment to ponder how that is possible, especially as the universe moves at sensational speeds even as it looks perfectly still in the night sky. Awares think about this in the way we wonder randomly how the ancients joined the dots ‘up there’ to make a scorpion or a lion. Pupils each must have their own drawing board. Then there are strategic learners, good whether at testing a hypothesis or setting the table and cleaning up afterwards. Their metacognitive skills wish to devise ways of finding answers to questions such as why stop at two trillion, if there are more universes then where do we stand in relation to them, or sit down to lunch even, and why weren’t we told this earlier? Together strategics figure out these and other conundrums, soft and hard, with the same doggedness and verve. Fourth, though presumably there are fifth, sixth, and seventh levels of metacognition given there are two trillion galaxies just for starters, is the reflective learner. As the word says, they are not only strategic but reflect on their thinking, monitor their strategies and change them accordingly. They may observe the correspondence between the only life we know on Earth, numbered in the trillions but all different in mode and appearance, and the burgeoning of galaxies up to and including the trillions likewise ‘out there’, many of those galaxies invisible even to the eye of the reflective. They will write a corresponding poem by way of illustration, or a record-breaking symphony eventually, or a group sculpture by the seashore.