Use of a guided journal to support development of metacognitive instructors

This presentation shows teacher-scholars the benefits of using a guided journal to support the development of metacognitive instruction. ‘Metacognitive instruction’ is the use of reflective awareness to make timely adjustments to teaching a specific individual or group of students. Faculty and students from five institutions participated, with intervention instructors completing a semester-long reflective journal and everyone completing a series of surveys. We found that the more instructors engaged in the journal, the more likely they were to engage in pre-class planning and post-class reflection, particularly with regard to student engagement, achieving learning objectives, and identifying alternative learning strategies. Based on our findings, we argue that guided reflective journals might help accelerate instructors along a developmental arc from being teacher-centered and content-focused to being able to deliver differentiated and customized learning to a group of students, individuals within the group, or to isolated individuals in a mentor situation.