Perspective Chapter: Metacognitive Approaches for Teaching Scientific Communication to Chemistry Students

Learning to communicate clearly in STEM fields requires mastery of discipline specific vocabulary and norms of writing style and citations, along with following general rules for quality writing. For many students, this is too much to grasp all at once. A consciously metacognitive approach in teaching oral and written communication can improve student learning, retention, and performance in scientific communication. However, the role and application of metacognitive approaches may differ in the sciences and writing studies. We discuss different communication settings in which metacognitive approaches drawn from chemistry education and from writing studies may both be applied: the laboratory report, the seminar presentation, literature reviews, and oral examinations. In each of these settings, students benefit from metacognitive activities, such as reflections, co-creating the curricular environment, oral exams, and course discussion. Our observations in the context of undergraduate chemistry courses are broadly applicable to all STEM education