Jinan

> On 23 Jan 2019, at 10:48 am, Jinan K B <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> So could we say metacognition happens to people who have involved in a
> deep enquiry?
>
> I was thinking of another example of how people who are deeply
> interested in language/ grammar etc also could have this happening to
> them. So they hear what is being said and also at the same time
> cognize the abstract, depending upon what they have been enquiring up
> on.
>
> So could we say that one condition is deep interest and second is that
> metacognition happens when a real experience is happening? That is a
> concrete experience is when both cognition and metacognition happens?

I’m always suspicious about distinctions between surface and deep. It’s a habit of mind, a recurrently used metaphor that takes us down some fascinating but not necessarily productive rabbit holes. (There’s a metaphorical rabbit hole for you!)

In a summary of theory in our own work I wrote:

> [Our Institute’s way of thinking about theory] …breaks with one of the most enduring intellectual projects of our time, in which theory has been elevated above practice to argue that there are underlying principles and rules that guide practice.
>
> Many of the intellectual projects in the behavioural and social sciences, in the humanities, and in the arts have been concerned with attempts to develop such theories. This ‘turn to theory’ has become so much part of ordinary thinking in our time that many people hardly notice it as an aspect of our culture and treat it as if it were part of the natural order of things: that underlying all surface phenomena there must be deeper causes and explanations. But this view, like any other, is something that people have invented in order to give intellectual coherence to lived experience. People have created plausible metaphors to live by.
>
> The root metaphor for these various theoretical projects is to be found in the notion of a foundation of underlying principles and rules: the idea that there is a substrate—a hidden layer of activity—which powerfully controls the surface phenomenon. For example, the Gestalt rules of visual perception structuring what is seen; attitudes, intentions and feelings shaping behaviour; human information processing shaping reading; deep structures shaping language use, and so on. In each case, the substrate, which is entirely hidden from direct observation, is presumed to control the observable surface phenomena: behaviour, reading, language use, and so on.
>
> One of the consequences of these theoretical projects is that the presumed underlying activity is treated as if it had objective, even material, status. Thus, for example, instead of talking about what people need, we talk about people having ‘needs’. Such reification gives an altogether misleading impression, endowing vague, hypothetical and, by definition, hidden states with objective status.
>
> This view and the methodologies it has created—such as experiments, surveys and focus groups—have been extensively used in information design research to ‘reveal’ the underlying processes that control and explain information users’ behaviour. While it has led to some intrinsically interesting findings, and some modest improvements in design, the evidence shows that this way of thinking and its attendant methodologies do not directly generate action-oriented outcomes.
>
> I have no doubt that many people who have invested their careers and reputations in the application of these methodologies to information design will find the view I have just developed totally unacceptable. I can only counter with the observation that there are simpler pathways to enable action.
https://communication.org.au/theory-for-practice/


David
--





blog: http://communication.org.au/blo <http://communication.org.au/blo>g/
web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/>

Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •

Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (03) 9005 5903

Skype: davidsless

60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068

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