We often rely on our intuitions in educational contexts. Students have intuitions about the best way to learn and educators have intuitions about the best way to teach. Unfortunately, research shows that many of these intuitions are wrong. In other words, both students and educators suffer from metacognitive illusions.
Dr Philip Higham is a Reader in Cognitive Psychology and is running a workshop on Monday 1 November 12:00 – 13:00 as a follow up to his recent appearance at the Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP) Festival of Learning and Teaching.
“The basis for many of these illusions seems to be a faulty fluency heuristic: material that is easy to understand, easy to read, or makes a lot of sense in the here and now, is believed to be durably learned. However, often the opposite is true. Instead, the presence of surmountable obstacles that create some hardship and slow the learning process are often (but not always) good and produce durable memories and understanding. This is a principle known as desirable difficulty. Metacognitive illusions can lead to serious consequences.
“For example, a student who has fallen for a metacognitive illusion may not see the need to study certain material prior to an exam. The result is the classic case of a student who does not perform well on an exam but does not understand where they went wrong. In this talk, I will outline research on several metacognitive illusions, delineate the problems they present for students and educators, and discuss ways that they might be overcome.”
This event is being held as part of the CHEP Community series of events.
Please visit the Metacognitive Illusions in Education page for more information.
