Teacher training in metacognitive strategy instruction leads to reading comprehension gains

Listen, educator preparation training is difficult. Typically, pre-service teacher candidates, school districts, and policy makers understandably want the most efficient and cost-effective program possible (who wants to pay for an undergraduate or graduate degree longer than is necessary?). At the same time, the corpus of knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to be an effective teacher in the modern world continues to grow. What these countervailing trends mean is that, often, educator preparation faculty  feel like they are trying to stuff 15lbs of potatoes into a 10lb bag (I’ve kept it clean - the typical phrasing of that analogy is more…colorful). So, I’m deeply sympathetic to educator preparation faculty who say, “We’ve just barely got curricular space to teach the fundamentals of teaching. It would be great to teach more of the science of learning, but something has got to give.” (Note: people are working on integrating the science of learning into teacher training - it’s not for a lack of will or perceived value, it’s just hard.)

Nonetheless, it’s studies like this one by Urban et al. (2023) that make me think there’s real value in trying to squeeze in some more science of learning into educator preparation programs. Urban and colleagues found that thoughtful, targeted teacher training on metacognitive knowledge and skill instruction prior to the academic year had positive effects on 3rd-5th graders’ reading comprehension. Importantly, the researchers had a relatively “hands-off” approach during the academic year, letting teachers implement the training as they saw fit. This suggests to me that if we could find more ways to get the science of learning into pre-service teacher education, the payoffs could be big.