(Meta)Cognitive Presence for Graduate Student Teacher Training

Abstract

This qualitative study examines cognitive presence in a graduate-level online pedagogy course that introduced students to the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. Students wrote weekly reflections that described their own learning and speculated on how they could apply what they learned to create positive online learning environments for future students. This article focuses on a reflection students wrote about cognitive presence in which they analyzed their own engagement with the four phases of practical inquiry during the week they read articles that theorized cognitive presence. The results illustrate the value of metacognition about cognitive presence as a teacher training tool. The CoI framework gave students a vocabulary to describe their own learning and prompted them to reflect on when that learning was or was not visible to the instructor. This knowledge positively impacted their plans for designing learning environments to help their future online students move through the four phases of practical inquiry.