Probing teachers' lesson planning: Promoting metacognition

Classrooms are complex systems, with dynamic interactions of different kinds among their composing varied elements. Such complex interactions lead to the system's unpredictable emergent learning behaviors. To support teachers' lesson planning and monitoring in the complex environment of classrooms, the present article examines the core metacognitive skills of goaldirected lesson planning and monitoring and presents a novel tool for scaffolding teachers' self-regulated instruction by increasing their awareness of goals, activities, discrepancy cues, and instructional time management. The chapter describes a qualitative pilot study with two experienced teachers working in a secondary school and a particular teachers' professional development program. It investigates their utilization of this metacognitive scaffolding tool that has been previously validated as promoting ninth graders' metacognitive awareness and adapted for teachers' use. This Lesson Planning-Monitoring Scaffold (LPMS) supported teachers' lesson planning (including activities sequences, learning settings, and time management), monitoring of plans' enactment, and postlesson as well as yearly reflections on lessons' goal achievement and tool's support. The rationale and structure of this metacognitive tool are described, and teachers' use of the tool is analyzed. Finally, implications for future research on the LPMS and its uses are discussed.