Building Strong Knowledge Networks and Metacognitive Skills

To help students better organize their knowledge schemas teachers can reflect on organizing principles for the knowledge they work with students to construct. This requires some metacognition on the part of teachers reflecting on how they themselves organize the course in their own minds. Therefore in order to understand how learners organize knowledge teachers must reflect on their own ideas and connected concepts.

To target students who have robust foundations ready to build subsequent learning upon teachers should ensure students have a strongly connected knowledge network which maximizes the likelihood of the quick prior knowledge retrieval (Bradshaw & Anderson 1982; Reder & Anderson 1980; Smith Adams & Schorr 1978). Robust knowledge networks are constructed via meaning and internal conceptualizations of the tasks skills or effort courses require. Students who develop metacognitive skills - to reflect upon and refine what they know - are more likely to plan and implement effortful strategies to further their own learning and development.

Furthermore studies by Schommer (1994) and Henderson & Dweck (1990) found that a positive relationship between students’ beliefs that intelligence is incremental and their perceived self-efficacy and motivation. Students with a growth mindset - who believe that through practice iteration and reflection they can achieve more in a course - are more likely to have the intrinsic motivation to develop metacognitive skills.