Metacognition

Metacognition (noun): : awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking processes (Merriam Webster)

I encountered the word metacognitive in the course syllabus, in the Departmental Learning Outcomes section. It’s the adjective form of metacognition.

“Use reflection and other metacognitive processes to revise prior assumptions about reading and writing and transfer acquired knowledge into new writing situations. Students write reflections of their own reading and writing process from the beginning and throughout the semester with the intention to transfer their acquired knowledge about genre and composing practices into new writing situations.”

In other words, one goal of the course is to get students to reflect on the what they’re doing and to take that into new writing and reading situations. Reflection is a kind of metacognitive process because it makes us aware of how we learn or think. Once we understand how we learn or think, we can apply the process to new readings, assignments, etc.