THEY DIDN'T KNOW HOW MUCH THEY DIDN'T KNOW

Did you join the millions who tuned in recently for the finale of the 22nd season of American Idol?

Don't feel bad if you didn't — I don't usually watch those kind of shows either.

But this popular TV program fascinates me for one reason — it puts on full display the lack of metacognition among some of its contestants.

Metacognition refers to the awareness of one's thought processes and the understanding of the patterns behind them.

It's thinking about one's thinking — and it refers to the mental processes that go into planning, monitoring, and assessing one's level of performance and understanding.

The concept of American Idol is to have amateur musicians audition and then compete for the opportunity to win fame, fortune, and a recording contract.

The season's opening episodes have become notorious for including several of the most untalented performers who auditioned for the show.

The purpose of showcasing these ungifted singers is to create benign schadenfreude among viewers as the contestants make fools of themselves before millions on national television.

These unfortunate candidates are simply unable to grasp their own vocal improficiency.

Here's an example below — watch as the contestant says: "There's no way I'm not going to get it." This is worth the effort to see if nothing more than to stand in awe at her audacity.

Another extraordinary example of poor metacognition in the music world was the interminable Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944).

The wealthy New York socialite imagined herself a superiorly talented opera singer and was devoted to her music and her performances.

She bullied her husband into becoming her agent and he dutifully booked recitals where she'd sing for two hours without a break, switching from Russian to Spanish and French, but always screechingly off-key.

Audiences flocked to her performances to secretly shower her with derision, inspiring such comments as:

"…a Jenkins recital was never exactly an aesthetic experience — only to the degree early Christians among the lions provided aesthetic experience; it was chiefly immolatory, and Madame Jenkins was always eaten in the end." Poet William Meredith

But she never doubted her ability despite reviews calling her the Diva of Din, Florence the Queen of the Quarter Tone, and a "singer who committed 'Murder on the High Cs'."

If you think you can bear it, below is an original 1940 recording — a snippet of Florence Foster Jenkins singing Mozart's "Queen of the Night."

Abysmal levels of metacognition aren't confined to people who imagine they can sing.

We all know at least one person who is seldom in doubt of their abilities, but who is frequently wrong.

Think about people you know who aren't funny but who believe they're hilarious.

Folks who are certain they're exceptional drivers — but someone you wouldn't want to get into the car with.

I'm related to someone with awful metacognition.

She published a book several years ago with a sketchy vanity publisher who managed to bilk thousands of dollars from her.

They convinced her that her boring and poorly written "medical mystery/love story," filled with Bible-thumping characters, would be a break-out best-seller.

She would earn tons of money and would become established as an up-and-coming new writer.

Her book sucked. Not only was it painful to read, but I counted over 40 typos, misspellings, and composition errors in the first 20 pages.

The vanity publisher didn't even proofread her manuscript.

The 20 or so books she sold were all bought by relatives and friends.

Undeterred, she's working on another — blaming the poor sales on the pandemic.

University of Notre Dame Professor James M. Lang writes: "Poor metacognition is a big part of incompetence. Incompetent people typically do not realize how incompetent they are."

The lack of metacognition among students is a topic that has received a lot of attention over the years. And it was something I recognized in some of my grad students.

I taught graduate school for almost 18 years at a mid-sized, private university as an evening adjunct while running my small business during the day.

My students were almost entirely adult learners in this MBA program, where I taught marketing, entrepreneurship, and critical thinking.

With each class there seemed to be a growing number of students who were unable to accurately assess their grasp of the subject matter and who were grossly overconfident about their degree of understanding.

This inevitably resulted in their making bad study decisions.

While most of my students studied, read, and engaged in class, others simply stopped studying well before they reached the depth and breadth of understanding.

They were convinced they'd already mastered the topic.

What they felt was an excellent grasp of the material was only a shallow, fragmented understanding based on misconceptions and inaccurate interpretations.

Following the exams, some were genuinely shocked when they scored poorly.

"But Professor Camp, we talked about this in class. I remember!" they'd argue.

"We certainly did. Where are your notes? Didn't you read the chapters in your text?" I'd ask.

My classes weren't inordinately hard, nor were my exams — god forfend — tricky. I was never a believer in trick questions.

In fact, my exams were "open book." This meant students could use their class notes and textbook while taking the exams.

Since my essay questions required a deep understanding of the literature it didn't matter at that point if they used the book or not. You can't learn a semester's worth of information sitting for a three-hour exam.

Last-minute flipping through the pages in desperation wouldn't help them. Either they knew it or didn't.

The last classes I taught at the university were right before COVID. By that time I'd grown weary of dealing with some of my students.

Although I still enjoyed teaching — I was getting beaten down by a whiny minority who wanted to niggle over every test question, trying to contort it in a way that would make their answers intelligible.

I often wondered if there was some cultural phenomenon driving this tendency toward their lack of self-awareness and metacognition.

What was going on that led them to shorten their study time, thinking they'd mastered topics they barely understood?

Years later I still don't have an answer to that question.

However, my research alerted me to a few recent studies and articles on student learning and metacognition.

Currently, some instructors are incorporating metacognition into their pedagogy. They're showing students how to become aware of their metacognitive skills through "explicit teaching."

Students are asked to consider how self-aware they are of things like difficulty remembering peoples' names in social situations or whether they reread passages in their textbooks when they realize they don't understand them.

Along with many others, these are simple exercises but are powerful in the way they present real-life examples of one's level of metacognition.

Similarly related to metacognition is the cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in certain areas grossly overestimate their abilities.

This is known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

In 1999, Cornell psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger conducted studies to understand why some students performed poorly on exams on topics they not only believed they understood but thought they had a superior grasp of.

This perception gap, explained by Dunning-Kruger, is facilitated by popular learning techniques like highlighting key points in one's text.

In reality, that's one of the least effective learning tools because it gives students a false sense of mastery.

They superficially review highlighted passages and then move on without grasping that they didn't absorb what they just read.

Final thoughts

Poor metacognition has serious implications — and not just for student learning.

The lack of metacognitive knowledge can interfere with learning in many other environments and circumstances outside the classroom.

Like the contestants on American Idol, for example.

Metacognition is important in our everyday life. It's a critical skill essential for all kinds of problem-solving and goal-directed behaviors.

And it's something we should aspire to master — not just for academics but for living successful lives.

© Deborah Camp 2024. All Rights Reserved.

Thank you for your time and attention.