How many times have you left an exam feeling frustrated because it was not what you expected? Me, a lot of times. For this reason, I have spent many years learning to check my true mastery of a subject before presenting it in an academic test. If you want to learn how to do the same, keep reading.
Most students study mainly from the teacher's notes or from their textbook, without having constructed their own version of what they want to learn. This makes them highly dependent on the exam resembling class material, leaving them defenseless against any changes.
Metacognition makes it easier to get good grades
Something that distinguishes novice learners very well from experts is that the latter use many strategies to consolidate the information they learn and continually put them to the test, while the novice always use the same.
The experts know what they have learned at all times and design strategies to understand and integrate what resists them. The basis for these actions is a process known as Metacognition. What a word, right? With the following example, you will understand its meaning.
I don't know if you are a good cook, but if I ask you: how can you fry an egg without oil? I'm sure you know how to do it: with butter, with lard, with a little water, etc.
The first few times we fry an egg, we think that oil is an essential ingredient and that's why we guarantee that it's in the pantry. In fact, we did not consider making a fried egg any other way until we ran out of oil in the middle of cooking; and it is precisely this experience that prepares us to face the situation of cooking an egg without oil.
To pass you have to know how to adapt to changes
With each subject and at each educational level, students must overcome a new academic challenge that involves both using their current cognitive skills and working to improve them. To achieve these objectives, the implementation of Metacognition is essential.
Metacognition is the ability to plan what learning strategies to use in each situation, apply them, control the process, evaluate it to detect possible failures, and as a consequence… transfer all of this to a new action. In other words: be like MacGyver.
If you are over 30 years old, surely you have seen MacGyver sometime. It was a television series from the 80s starring Richard Dean Anderson.
MacGyver became famous for his ability to improvise solutions that allowed him to escape from any extreme situation using his most dangerous weapon: intelligence.
No matter where and how they locked him up, this secret agent looked around him, and using the materials found there and those in his pocket, he always got away with it. In fact, he was an expert in metacognition.
Expert learners are actually Macgyvers from school, who when struggling, instead of locking themselves out, devise a strategy to get out of the situation and turn the problem into an opportunity to become proficient in a new area.
How to learn to be a MacGyver in school
When we are little we are all Macgyvers by nature, we are always researching, experimenting and trying new things. But when we get to school they usually teach us a single way of doing things. But do you know what?
There is no person who has been considered a genius for humanity who has followed to the letter the way of learning that he was taught in school. Albert Einstein, Thomas Alba Edison and Pablo Picasso are clear examples of this. They did not learn like the others, but they got to develop their element because they knew each other very well as apprentices.
To be a Macgyver of studies, the learner must ask a simple question: How do I learn best? You may understand and remember things better when you watch a movie or when you act out a story theme. My proposal and that of many experts like Ken Robison is the same: that they learn using their element.
If a student moves any content they want to acquire into the context of their element, that is, what they are passionate about, learning will become a game. A fun challenge that they will have to solve in order to take another step towards developing their talents and becoming expert learners.
In summary, to make the study hours profitable and give the best of each one in the exams, you have to know how to adapt to changes and develop metacognition. Something that is easier to develop if we learn it in our element.
