Distributed Metacognition during Peer Collaboration

Current educational reform efforts stress the need for educators to teach critical thinking skills and use group-based pedagogical methods. However, the empirical literature is still unclear under which circumstances they are best fostered. The present study examined scientific reasoning as participants worked on a causal reasoning task alone versus with a partner. In previous work, individual working alone readily acquire new strategies and add them to their existing repertoire but do not abandon their less-effective strategies. The challenge of cognitive development lies not in the construction of new strategies, but rather in the consolidation of metastrategic knowledge that allows individuals to effectively evaluate and select strategies from their repertoire. The results of this research suggest that special emphasis should be placed in peer collaboration’s role in fostering metastrategic understanding rather than focusing only on the development of strategies. Further, it suggests a benefit of collaboration not previously explored; the mutual reinforcement of each other’s unstable metastrategic control through a process of distributed metacognition. Instead of deep collaboration about simple thought (theories and strategies), the benefits of collaboration for these participants lie in simple collaboration about deep thought (metastrategic knowledge).