Thinking About Thinking in Criminal Justice Education

• In Event: Using Traditional and Non-Traditional Tools to Improve Criminal Justice Curricula

Abstract

Metacognitive learning techniques encourage students to engage course material in such a way that facilitates learning, retention, and application of information gained from a course. While metacognition has begun to be widely used in higher education, little is known about its applicability to criminal justice education. Using a sample of undergraduate students from core criminal justice major courses, this study assesses the impact of metacognitive exercises on learning for criminal justice majors. Specifically, we compared the effect of implementing metacognitive activities on objective and subjective measures of student learning. The results of our evaluation revealed that metacognitive learning techniques were found to have varied objective effectiveness while simultaneously having consistent subjective effectiveness.

Authors

• Patrick Cundiff, Western Michigan University

• Kerri Flinchbaugh, East Carolina University