The array of research on college readiness agrees that students need not only content knowledge and cognitive skills, but also certain noncognitive and metacognitive competencies for college success. The California Center for College and Career boils the content of some 12 college and career readiness frameworks down to four common areas of competency: knowledge; skills; productive dispositions and behaviors; and educational, career, and civic engagement. These frameworks recognize and validate the fact that productive dispositions, behaviors, and engagement are necessary if students are to put their knowledge and skills to effective use.
Non-Cognitive Competencies Necessary For College Success
Noncognitive competencies needed for college readiness, according to one group of researchers, can be grouped into five categories: “academic behaviors,” “academic perseverance,” “social skills,” “learning strategies,” “academic mindset.”[1] The college-readiness frameworks tend to identify such competencies as “productive dispositions and behaviors,” while the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” includes them within “habits of mind.” We can think of them generally as behaviors needed for college success.
Metacognitive competencies include the ability to reflect on oneself—e.g., one’s thinking, motivations, objectives, performance—and to recognize the social, cultural, and institutional contexts in which one is operating. In the college-readiness framework, the major metacognitive emphasis is on the ability to “navigate” higher education. The “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” encourages students’ ability to examine and analyze their own writing processes, texts, and choices. In general, we can think of metacognitive competencies in terms of awareness: students’ awareness of themselves as learners, and their awareness of the institution and society around them.
Students put forth a high level of effort in the interest of advancing their academic knowledge, skills, and behaviors:
• Their work is thorough and demonstrates thoughtful effort; • They persistently review, revise, and edit their work in an effort to improve its quality; • They make efforts to advance their knowledge and skills beyond the minimum required for course completion; • They demonstrate determination to improve their performance over time.
Social behaviors
Students put forth a high level of effort for the benefit of others in an academic community:
• They contribute to the community ideas and perspectives that enrich discussion and promote critical thinking;
• They thoughtfully consider the work of others and provide thorough critical feedback that is intellectually and socially constructive;
• They make contributions to their academic community beyond the minimum required for course completion.
• They meet their deadline obligations to others.
Students show respect for others in an academic community.
• The tone of their exchanges with others is respectful.
• The content of their exchanges with others is respectful.
• The focus of their exchanges with others is relevant and on-task.
• The overall impact of their exchanges with others is supportive of the efforts of individuals and of the academic goals of the community.
Students learn and productively use the language and concepts of an academic discourse.
They accurately incorporate key academic writing terms into exchanges with others (e.g., “argument,” “ethos,” “credible”).
They demonstrate an understanding and effective use of key writing concepts (e.g., meeting the expectations of an audience; supporting a position with evidence and reasoning).
AWARENESS (metacognitive competencies)
Self-Awareness
Students thoughtfully assess the quality of their own effort and performance.
They strive to improve their effort and performance in response to their self-assessment.
They recognize that they are responsible for their own intellectual engagement, for discovering and pursuing their own academic interests, and for determining their own academic motivations and goals.
They thoughtfully reflect on their own motivation and readiness to do college-level academic work.
Social Awareness
Students recognize that becoming an academically educated person entails learning and practicing the modes of communication and meaning-making that are accepted and valued within particular educational communities.
They recognize that the agency of individuals—their capacity for advancing their own perspectives and goals—depends on their ability to communicate and make meaning in ways that are accepted and valued by the communities in which they operate.
They recognize that their relationship to their educational communities— classrooms, schools, discipline—is structured in part by their own background, identity, experiences, and values.
The studies of middle and high school classroom practices suggest that noncognitive and metacognitive knowledge and skills such as these are missing from pre-college writing instruction.[2] Accordingly, a great number of students are not equipped with the full array of competencies needed for successful writing in college. What they learn in high school is not aligned with what is expected of them afterwards.
Spelling out noncognitive and metacognitive competencies in this way allows them to be intentionally folded into writing instruction. And if intentionally taught, then they can be elicited from students in their writing exercises and classroom interactions, then evaluated by teachers. In this way, they can help teachers, parents, and administrators make evidence-based claims about the college-readiness of their students.
William Bryant, PhD is the President and Co-Founder of BetterRhetor Resources, an educational publishing & services company he and his wife operate headquartered in Prescott, Arizona.
In addition to college readiness, Dr. Bryant writes about education, equity, democracy—and how they fit together. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Works Cited
[1] Nagaoka, Jenny, et al. “Readiness for College: The Role of Noncognitive Factors and Context.” Voices in Urban Education 38 (2013): 45-52.
[2] Cf., Kiuhara, Sharlene A., Steve Graham, and Leanne S. Hawken. “Teaching writing to high school students: A national survey.” Journal of Educational Psychology 101.1 (2009): 136.
College students are expected to demonstrate critical thinking in their compositions, by insightfully analyzing and evaluating information, arguments, and perspectives from other sources, and by contributing ideas, arguments, and solutions of their own.
Much of secondary-school writing instruction, however, emphasizes formulas and surface features over disciplined inquiry and rigorous analysis. Standardized testing in particular tends to focus secondary school writing instruction on form at the expense of content. As a result, many students come to believe that correct form and mechanics, more than substance, constitute good writing.
The Key to College Success
This misconception can be a major impediment to success for new college students. As Marlink and Wahleithner write, “By privileging form over an exploration of ideas and analysis, the formulaic approach to writing stands in direct opposition to the type of writing expected in the post-secondary world.”[1] In higher education, writing is understood as more than a means for demonstrating command of form and language: it is itself a method of learning, an occasion for complex problem-solving, a tool for discovering and refining one’s own thinking, and for contributing meaningfully to conversations within a discourse community. As Dolores Perin notes, “College instructors routinely assign writing not for the purpose of teaching writing skills, but to promote students’ development of knowledge and ideas.” [2]
Condon and Kelly-Riley identify with some precision the form critical thinking takes in college-level writing:[3]
Identification of a problem or issue.
Establishment of a clear perspective on the issue
Recognition of alternative perspectives
Location of the issue within an appropriate context
Identification and evaluation of evidence
Recognition of fundamental assumptions implicit or stated by the representation of an issue
Assessment of implications and potential conclusions.
Students benefit from understanding prior to beginning their college careers that academic writing will be a primary means for demonstrating not only their language skills and mastery of form, but also the depth of their knowledge and the quality of their thinking. Pre-college writing instruction, therefore, should equip them with this understanding.
If students are to become critical thinkers, they must be given writing assignments that encourage them to develop and demonstrate those skills. That’s why it’s so important that they get the chance to work on authentic, extended, research-supported academic essays.
William Bryant, PhD is the President and Co-Founder of BetterRhetor Resources, an educational publishing & services company he and his wife operate headquartered in Prescott, Arizona.
In addition to college readiness, Dr. Bryant writes about education, equity, democracy—and how they fit together. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Works Cited
[1]Marlink, Jayne, and Juliet Wahleithner. “Improving students’ academic writing: Building a bridge to success.” Berkeley, CA: California Writing Project (2011).
[2]Perin, Dolores. “Best practices in teaching writing for college and career readiness.” Best practices in writing instruction (2013): 48-72.
[3]Condon, William, and Diane Kelly-Riley. “Assessing and teaching what we value: The relationship between college-level writing and critical thinking abilities.” Assessing Writing 9.1 (2004): 56-75.
In the 1980s, a highly influential new model of writing arose from researchers Linda Flower and John R. Hayes.[1] It described the process of composition in terms of cognitive functions: the mental processes by which writing decisions are made, ideas are translated into written language, long-term and working memory are engaged, etc.—in essence, all of the things that go on in a person’s head as they write.
Cognitive Competencies
In this “cognitive model,” writing competencies develop according to a natural progression as students mature. Individuals may progress at different rates, but the cognitive process is pretty much the same for everyone. Instruction therefore need not concern itself with differences in students’ identity or background; it need only focus on developing a collection of skills.
By the 1990s, the cognitive model of writing was shaping instruction across primary and secondary education, and it continues to be predominant in pre-college instruction today.
In higher education, however, the cognitive theory of writing has been challenged and supplemented by sociocultural theory. This theory accounts for the fact that, whatever cognitive processes are at work in the production of text, writing is always shaped by the particular social and cultural contexts in which it takes place. The writer is always situated within a discourse community, which has its own governing values, shared assumptions, accepted and expected ways of communicating and behaving. Learning to write, then is largely a matter of getting socialized into particular discourse communities—such as the discourse community of the college classroom.
That’s not to say that cognitive functions aren’t still recognized and emphasized in college writing instruction, however. They’re still found in the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing,” for example, where they are identified as “skills and knowledge” (in contrast to “habits of mind”).
Specifically, the Framework identifies:
Writing process skills
Rhetorical knowledge
Critical thinking
Knowledge of conventions.
If these, according to research, are the cognitive competencies students need in order to be successful college writers, how. do pre-college instructors ensure that students get a chance to develop them before heading off to college?
The best way, in my view, is by making sure students have opportunities to work on composing authentic, extended, research-supported essays. This is the kind of writing that develops and demonstrates these competencies; not by coincidence, it is also the kind of writing students are asked to produce most often early in college.
Extended essay assignments provide a way to translate the high-level cognitive competencies identified in the readiness framework into specifics that can be demonstrated in student writing and evaluated by instructors. For example:
Writing Process Competences:Students successfully use planning, drafting, revising, and finalizing process strategies to compose their extended, research-supported academic essay.
Rhetorical Knowledge:As students compose an academic essay, their considerations and decisions are guided by a thoughtful understanding of the writing task, their purposes for writing, and their audiences. They use modes of expression and reasoning that are valued and persuasive within college academics.
Critical Thinking: Students demonstrate an ability to insightfully analyze and evaluate ideas, arguments, and perspectives from other sources, and to contribute their own well-reasoned ideas, arguments, and perspectives in turn.
Knowledge of Conventions:Students understand that academic discourse communities expect texts to adhere to established conventions of form, style, and presentation. Their writing demonstrates an ability to adhere to the conventions associated with an extended research-supported academic essay, by exhibiting correct grammar, mechanics, and formatting; effective organization; and appropriate tone and style.
Research suggests that students must develop specific cognitive competencies to be successful writers in college. The best way to develop those competencies is to practice composing authentic academic essays. Pre-college writing instruction therefore should include opportunities for students to begin learning how to produce extended, research-supported compositions.
William Bryant, PhD is the President and Co-Founder of BetterRhetor Resources, an educational publishing & services company he and his wife operate headquartered in Prescott, Arizona.
Many of the best practices reflected in the Common Core State Standards and other standards frameworks do not make it into classroom instruction because they cannot be assessed via conventional standardized testing.
Student writing quality, in particular, suffers.
The frameworks typically, and rightly, emphasize authentic composition skills such as research, planning, and revision—skills essential to completing an authentic piece of academic writing. Conventional testing, however, asks students to demonstrate their knowledge of writing by answering multiple-choice questions, which have little ability to measure real composition skills or higher-level thinking.
Some tests do ask students to generate a timed, impromptu essay, based on a standardized prompt. But the writing students produce in response to these prompts bears little resemblance to authentic academic composition: for example, timed writing tests provide no opportunity for students to find and analyze credible sources, to strategize and plan a nuanced argument or presentation of ideas, or to refine their thinking and polish their work through revision.
In their examination of assessments from 20 states, Brown and Conley found that English tests “aligned poorly or not at all” with the higher order thinking skills required for entry-level college success. Standards frameworks may articulate essential writing skills, but the execution of many of those skills requires authentic educational contexts and extended time frames.
To the extent that teachers and schools are held accountable for their students’ performance on standardized tests, they have incentive to prioritize the skills that are measured by the tests, and to neglect those that are not. Thus, even where standards frameworks do cover authentic and effective writing practices, these skills may not receive much attention in the classroom, because they’re not part of year-end accountability tests.
Student Writing Suffers
A large body of research documents the detrimental impact of high-stakes standardized tests on student learning, especially their tendency to narrow classroom curriculum to test-taking preparation. In the case of writing, as Applebee and Langer state, “high stakes tests are having a very direct and limiting effect on classroom emphasis. And given the dearth of writing required on most tests, this creates a powerful momentum away from the teaching of writing.”
While the tests purport to serve as a proxy for writing ability broadly conceived, they are not valid measures of authentic writing. The tests create a highly contrived context for writing that exists nowhere outside of testing. Since the writing students generate on the tests does not resemble the writing they’re required to produce in authentic contexts, the tests have low construct validity.
Standardized assessments tend to shift the focus of classroom writing instruction toward form rather than content, and toward product rather than process. This shift points away from research-verified best practices, and from the skilled writing that is needed for college and workplace success.
When teachers prepare students for standardized tests, writes Hillocks, “they are likely to mirror the worst features of the assessment, focusing on form, rewarding students for surface features and grammatical correctness—even though instructional literature indicates students need strategies for thinking about content far more than they need instruction in formal features of writing.”
According to Hassel and Giordano, the texts produced on conventional standardized tests, “almost never demonstrate a student’s ability in the most important skills sets, including knowledge of academic conventions, rhetorical knowledge, and process.”
A further concern about the impact of standardized tests on classroom instruction and learning stems from the automated scoring of test-taker essays. A piece of effective writing is intended to have an impact on its readers, but automated scoring systems don’t understand what they read and thus cannot register the rhetorical effect of a student’s work, even though this is one of the primary measures of its quality.
One leading researcher states, “the features of writing to which automated scoring systems are least sensitive are the very ones that writing instructors most value, including audience awareness, factual accuracy, rhetorical style, and quality of argument.
Conversely, the factors to which machines are most sensitive—essay length and mechanical correctness—are the ones the writing community values least. To the extent that students and teachers adjust their practice to emphasize the latter set of factors over the former, student writing may suffer.”
That suffering translates into a lack of preparation for college-level academic work. The “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” recommends against this kind of testing, because “standardized writing curricula or assessment instruments that emphasize formulaic writing for nonauthentic audiences will not reinforce the habits of mind and the experiences necessary for success as students encounter the writing demands of postsecondary education.
The online resource I’ve developed, College-Ready Writing Essentials, is a classroom and home resource designed to give students the kind of authentic composition experience they need most for college success instead.
William Bryant, PhD is the President and Co-Founder of BetterRhetor Resources, an educational publishing & services company he and his wife operate headquartered in Prescott, Arizona.
Creativity and critical thinking sit atop most lists of skills crucial for success in the 21st century. They represent two of the “Four Cs” in P21’s learning framework, for example (the other two being communication and collaboration). They rank second and third on the World Economic Forum’s top ten list of skills workers need most (complex problem solving ranks first).
The various lists of 21st-century skills grant creativity and critical thinking such prominence in part because they are human abilities that robots and AI are unlikely to usurp anytime soon. The picture of the near future that emerges from these compilations is one in which people must compete against their own inventions by exploiting the most human of their human qualities: empathy, a willingness to work together, adaptability, innovation. As the 21st century unfolds, creativity and critical thinking appear as uniquely human attributes essential for staving off our own obsolescence.
Like many things human, however, creativity and critical thinking are not easily or consistently defined. The Hewlett Organization’s list of “Deeper Learning Competencies,” for example, identifies creativity not as its own competency but as a tool for thinking critically. Bloom’s Taxonomy treats the two as separate educational goals, ranking creativity above critical thinking in the progression of intellectual abilities. Efforts to pin down these skills are so quickly muddled, one is tempted to fall back on the old Justice Stewart remark regarding obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” Unfortunately, that yardstick isn’t much help to teachers or students.
Definitions of creativity tend toward the broad and vague. One of the leading researchers in the area, Robert Sternberg, characterizes creativity as “a decision to buy low and sell high in the world of ideas.” While this is itself a creative definition, it is not one easily translated into a rubric.
Definitions of critical thinking don’t fare much better. According to one group of researchers, “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” Again, a curiously self-demonstrating definition, but not one ready-made for the classroom.
Generally speaking, creativity is associated with generating ideas, while critical thinking is associated with judging them. In practice, however, the two are not so easy to separate. As parents and teachers know well, creativity without critical judgment tends toward the fanciful, the impractical, the ridiculous. “Creative thinking” becomes a nice way of saying that someone’s ideas have run amok.
At the same time, critical thinking gets short shrift when reduced to making a judgment, since, at its best, critical thinking is also a way of making a contribution. It is fundamentally creative in the sense that its aim is to produce something new: an insight, an argument, a new synthesis of ideas or information, a new level of understanding.
Our grasp on creativity and critical thinking is improved when we see them in symbiotic relationship with one another. Creativity benefits from our recognizing the role of critical thinking in ensuring the value of novel ideas. In turn, critical thinking comes into clearer focus when we recognize it as a creative act that enriches understanding by giving rise to something that wasn’t there before.
What does this symbiotic relationship look like in the classroom? Here are a few educational contexts in which creativity is disciplined by critical thinking and critical thinking expanded through recognition of its creative function:
Writing. Creative writing only works when the writer’s critical judgment is brought to bear on the product of her imagination. However richly imagined, a story’s success depends on the skill with which its author corrals and controls her ideas, crafting them into something coherent and cohesive. Storycraft is accomplished by writers who discipline their own creative work by thinking critically about it.
Successful academic writing—argumentative, expository—requires not just critical analysis but also creative invention. Academic writers enter into conversation with their readers, their instructors, fellow students, other writers and scholars, anyone affected by or invested in their topic. As in any conversation, a successful participant doesn’t simply repeat back what others have already said, but builds upon it, asking critical questions, fine-tuning points, proposing solutions — in short, creating and contributing something original that extends and enriches the conversation.
History. History classes lend themselves readily to creative exercises, such as imagining the experiences of people in the past, or envisioning what the present might look like if this or that historical event had played out differently. These exercises succeed only when imagination is disciplined by critical thinking; conjectures must be plausible, connections logical, the use of evidence reasonable.
At the same time, critical analysis of historical problems often employs invention and is (or should be) rewarded for its creativity. For example, a student analyzing the US mission to the moon in terms of the theme of the frontier in American mythology is engaged in an intellectual activity that is at least as creative as it is evaluative.
Math. Creative projects can generate engagement and enthusiasm in students, prompting them to learn things they might otherwise resist. In this example, a middle school math class learned about circuitry on their way to creating a keyboard made of bananas. Projects like this one demonstrate that creativity and critical thinking are reciprocal. A banana keyboard is unquestionably creative, but of little utility except insofar as it teaches something valuable about electronics. Yet, that lesson was made possible only by virtue of the creative impulse the project inspired in students.
The skills today’s students will need for success are, at a most basic level, the skills that humans have always relied on for success — the very things that make us human, including our creativity and our capacity for thinking critically. The fact that our defining qualities so often defy definition, that our distinctive traits are so frustratingly indistinct, is just another gloriously untidy part of us that the robots will never understand.
William Bryant, PhD is the President and Co-Founder of BetterRhetor Resources, an educational publishing & services company he and his wife operate headquartered in Prescott, Arizona.
Dr. Bryant has been a writer, editor, and educator for over three decades. His blogging has been featured on GettingSmart, Curmudgication, and in Bright Magazine. In addition to college-readiness, he writes about education, equity, democracy—and how they fit together. He also writes about his 2yr old’s education in a substack here.
