Cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies among Arabic language students

This study investigates cognitive and metacognitive strategies in learning oral Arabic among students at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia. The concept of these strategies was derived from the self-regulated learning framework, which consists of five components, namely rehearsal, elaboration, organization, critical thinking, and metacognitive strategies. The purposes of this study are to investigate the level of cognitive and metacognitive strategies used (1) among UiTM students; (2) between students with different prior experiences, namely, some of them had an experience of 5 years in learning Arabic in secondary school (abbreviated by SWE) and some of them did not have any experience at all (abbreviated by SNE); (3) between students of different gender; and (4) between students with the interaction of different gender and prior experience. The sample of this study consists of 183 students and employs a questionnaire adapted from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). The study revealed that (1) all UiTM students used cognitive and metacognitive strategies at a moderate level; (2) SWE scored significantly higher than SNE in all five components of cognitive and metacognitive strategies; (3) females scored significantly higher than males in rehearsal, organization, and metacognitive strategies; and (4) there were no statistically significant differences noted in all components between students with the interaction of prior experience and gender. This study had some classroom implications. It suggested that some improvement and changes in learning oral Arabic should be made in terms of selecting learning materials, implementing oral Arabic activities, and learning tasks, which will stimulate the use of all strategies, as well as conducting proficiency tests instead of achievement tests. Students should also be exposed to the learning techniques which used all these strategies extensively and collaborative activities may be carried out among students with mixed prior experience and gender.     

Productive group engagement in cognitive activity and metacognitive regulation during collaborative learning: can it explain differences in students’ conceptual understanding?

This paper addresses the nature and significance of productive engagement in cognitive activity and metacognitive regulation in collaborative learning tasks that involve complex scientific knowledge. A situative framework, combining the constructs of social regulation and content processing, provided the theoretical basis for the development of a comprehensive coding scheme for interactive data analysis. An empirical study was conducted with two groups of university students working on two science-learning tasks. It examined the function of metacognitive regulation to control the flow of cognitive activity, and the extent to which group differences in cognitive and metacognitive regulation processes during collaborative learning could explain differences in the groups’ learning outcomes. The findings provide validation of the framework and its derived coding scheme. An example of a way in which a group engages in socially shared metacognitive regulation is presented to demonstrate how the coding scheme was applied to the data. Theoretical and empirical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Using student-generated questions for student-centred assessment

In small groups, medical students were involved in generating questions to contribute to an online item bank. This study sought to support collaborative question‐writing and enhance students’ metacognitive abilities, in particular, their ability to self‐regulate learning and moderate understanding of subject material. The study focused on supporting students to write questions requiring higher order cognitive processes. End‐of‐year formal examinations comprised 25% student‐generated questions (SGQs), while mid‐year examination items were completely unseen. Data were gathered from repeated administration of a questionnaire and from examination results. No statistically significant changes were identified in self‐rated monitoring of understanding and regulation of learning. The activity of generating questions supported students to work collaboratively in developing questions and answers. The bank of questions was appreciated by students as a source of revision material, even though it was not strongly focused on higher order processes. Based on scores, it would appear that many students chose to memorise the question bank as a ‘high‐yield’ strategy for mark inflation, paradoxically favouring surface rather than deep learning. The study has not identified directly improvements in metacognitive capacity and this is an area for further investigation. Continual refinement of the study method will be undertaken, with an emphasis on education of students in developing questions addressing higher order cognitive processes. Although students may have memorised the questions and answers, there is no evidence that they do not understand the information.     

Applying mathematics with real world connections: metacognitive characteristics of secondary students

This paper reports an intensive study of problem-solving activity of female students at the senior secondary level. The study focussed both on the mathematical processing and the underlying cognitive and metacognitive activities that led to that processing. Response maps were used to analyse and categorize the written responses from individual students while videotaped problem solving sessions and structured and free response interviews probed the students' metacognitive knowledge, strategies, decision making, beliefs and affects. Metacognitive activities were involved in all phases of the solution process with key points in students' solutions identifiable in terms of the cognitive-metacognitive framework of Garofalo and Lester (1985). On average more time was spent on orientation and execution activities with little time being spent on organisation and verification activities, however, the successful groups spent less time on orientation than the other groups. All successful groups displayed a high number of key points where metacognitive decisions could influence cognitive action. Success was accompanied by a tendency to engage in a high number of organisational activities, regulation of execution activities and evaluation activities particularly evaluation of execution but fewer opportunities where metacognitive decisions could influence cognitive actions during orientation.     

Examining evolutions in the adoption of metacognitive regulation in reciprocal peer tutoring groups

We aimed to investigate how metacognitive regulation is characterised during collaborative learning in a higher education reciprocal peer tutoring (RPT) setting. Sixty-four Educational Sciences students participated in a semester-long RPT-intervention and tutored one another in small groups of six. All sessions of five randomly selected RPT-groups were videotaped (70 h of video recordings). Analyses were focussed on identifying time-bound evolutions with regard to (a) the frequency of occurrence of metacognitive regulation, (b) the low-/deep-level approach to regulation, and (c) the initiative (by tutors/tutees) for metacognitive regulation. Logistic regression models allowing change points were adopted to study evolutions over time. The results indicated that RPT-groups increasingly adopt metacognitive regulation (i.e. orientation and evaluation) as the RPT-intervention progressed. Regarding RPT-groups’ regulative approach, the results revealed a significant evolution towards deep-level metacognitive regulation (i.e. orientation and monitoring), despite a dominant adoption of low-level regulation strategies. With regard to the initiative, the results demonstrated that tutees started to initiate RPT-groups’ monitoring significantly more frequently as they became familiar with the RPT-setting. Orientation, planning, and evaluation remained tutor-centred responsibilities.     

Extending Students’ Practice of Metacognitive Regulation Skills with the Science Writing Heuristic

Metacognition can be described as an internal conversation that seeks to answer the questions, ‘how much do I really know about what I am learning’ and, ‘how am I monitoring what I am learning?’ Metacognitive regulation skills are critical to meaningful learning because they facilitate the abilities to recognize the times when one's current level of understanding is insufficient and to identify the needs for closing the gap in understanding. This research explored how using the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) as an instructional approach in a laboratory classroom affected students’ practice of metacognitive skills while solving open-ended laboratory problems. Within our qualitative research design, results demonstrate that students in the SWH environment, compared to non-SWH students, used metacognitive strategies to a different degree and to a different depth when solving open-ended laboratory problems. As students engaged in higher levels of metacognitive regulation, peer collaboration became a prominent path for supporting the use of metacognitive strategies. Students claimed that the structure of the SWH weekly laboratory experiments improved their ability to solve open-ended lab problems. Results from this study suggest that using instruction that encourages practice of metacognitive strategies can improve students’ use of these strategies.     

How cognitive,metacognitive, motivational and emotional self‐regulation influence school performance in adolescence and early adulthood

This contribution aims to examine how different areas of self‐regulation are related to academic achievement in adolescents and young adults. The study involved participants, drawn from following age groups: 14–15, 17–18 and 22–23. In order to get information about cognitive, metacognitive, motivational and emotional aspects of self‐regulation, self‐report questionnaires were used. Differences between age‐groups revealed following tendency: there has been a decrease in all fields of self‐regulation from age of 14 (end of primary school) to the age of about 18 years (end of secondary school), and then results slowly improved to the age of about 22 years (students of undergraduate studies). The results obtained are mirroring perceived competence of self‐regulation and differ from the results concerning metacognitive accuracy. Metacognitive self‐regulation persists as an important predictor of school achievement at all developmental levels, and the motivational self‐regulation has significant impact on performance in the first and second age group.     

Metacognition in chemical education: question posing in the case-based computerized learning environment

Posing questions about an article might improve one’s knowledge—a cognitive function, or monitor one’s thought processes—a metacognitive function. This study focuses on guided question posing while using a metacognitive strategy by 12th grade honors chemistry students. We investigated the ways by which the metacognitive strategy affected students’ skills to pose complex questions and to analyze them according to a specially designed taxonomy. Our learning unit, Case-based computerized laboratories, emphasizes learning through chemical case studies, accompanied by tasks, that call for posing questions to which the answer cannot be found in the text. Teachers equipped their students with a metacognitive strategy for assessing the quality of their own questions and characterizing them according to a three-component taxonomy: content, thinking level, and chemistry understanding levels. The participants were 793 experimental and 138 comparison chemistry students. Research instruments included interviews and case-based-questionnaires. Interviews with students revealed that using the metacognitive strategy the students had been taught, they were capable of analyzing the questions they generated with the taxonomy. The questionnaires showed that students significantly improved their question posing skill, as well as the complexity level of the questions they posed. A significant difference was found in favor of the experimental group students. Stimulating students to generate complex questions with a metacognitive strategy in mind enabled them to be aware of their own cognitive process and to self-regulate it with respect to the learning task.     

Modelling and coaching of relevant metacognitive strategies for enhancing university students' learning

Recent developments in strategy instruction research suggest that learning in a particular discipline is enhanced by guiding students through the development of content-relevant metacognitive strategies. The potential of such an instructional approach for university settings is discussed in this paper, and is supported with evidence from an experimental field study. The study, conducted with 28 experimental and 28 matched control students over 13 weeks of an introductory computer science course, involved (a) students' development of a metacognitive strategy relevant for computer programming, (b) modelling and coaching procedures with complete explanations about strategy use, and (c) a socially supportive learning context. The instructional method had significant short-term and long-term effects on students' cognitive and affective learning outcomes.     

Exploring the Impacts of Cognitive and Metacognitive Prompting on Students’ Scientific Inquiry Practices Within an E-Learning Environment

This study explores the effects of metacognitive and cognitive prompting on the scientific inquiry practices of students with various levels of initial metacognition. Two junior high school classes participated in this study. One class, the experimental group (n?=?26), which received an inquiry-based curriculum with a combination of cognitive and metacognitive prompts, was compared to the other class, the comparison group (n?=?25), which received only cognitive prompts in the same curriculum. Data sources included a test of inquiry practices, a questionnaire of metacognition, and worksheets. The results showed that the mixed cognitive and metacognitive prompts had significant impacts on the students’ inquiry practices, especially their planning and analyzing abilities. Furthermore, the mixed prompts appeared to have a differential effect on those students with lower level metacognition, who showed significant improvement in their inquiry abilities. A combination of cognitive and metacognitive prompts during an inquiry cycle was found to promote students’ inquiry practices.     

The art of questioning in online learning environments: the potentialities of feedback in writing

Research on feedback has focused more on generating feedback rather than on how students use it and implement it; that is, what type of cognitive, metacognitive or affective activity students engage in once they have received feedback. In order to visualize feedback use and implementation, a quasi-experimental study was carried out. Students were randomly assigned to four conditions, in respect of the type of feedback (corrective, epistemic-questioning, suggestive and epistemic?+?suggestive). This research provides evidence of how students use and implement feedback in online collaborative writing. Findings show that when students received epistemic?+?suggestive feedback, they engaged in more cognitive and metacognitive activities. With regard to implementation, students who received epistemic?+?suggestive feedback obtained better final marks. This study highlights the importance of metacognitive activities in online learning, as they play a key role in the implementation of feedback.     

Analyzing the temporal evolution of students’ behaviors in open-ended learning environments

Metacognition and self-regulation are important for developing effective learning in the classroom and beyond, but novice learners often lack effective metacognitive and self-regulatory skills. However, researchers have demonstrated that metacognitive processes can be developed through practice and appropriate scaffolding. Betty’s Brain, an open-ended computer-based learning environment, helps students practice their cognitive skills and develop related metacognitive strategies as they learn science topics. In this paper, we analyze students’ activity sequences in a study that compared different categories of adaptive scaffolding in Betty’s Brain. The analysis techniques for measuring students’ cognitive and metacognitive processes extend our previous work on using sequence mining methods to discover students’ frequently-used behavior patterns by (i) developing a systematic approach for interpreting derived behavior patterns using a cognitive/metacognitive task model and (ii) analyzing the evolution of students’ frequent behavior patterns over time. Our results show that it is possible to identify students’ learning behaviors and analyze their evolution as they work in the Betty’s Brain environment. Further, the results illustrate that changes in student behavior were generally consistent with the scaffolding provided, suggesting that these metacognitive strategies can be taught to middle school students in computer-based learning environments.     

基于信息流视角的教师指导与协作学习效果分析

提升协作学习效果是研究者和实践者追求的目标。高质量的协作学习需要有效的教师指导。教师指导的哪些特征会影响协作学习效果呢？从信息流视角,把协作学习抽象为复杂的信息系统来研究教师输出的信息流与协作学习效果的关系,有助于克服已有研究存在的问题。对30个小组协作学习信息流进行分类和建模发现,能够直接对协作学习效果产生促进作用的教师指导包括知识语义、积极情感、答案、管理类信息,其中知识语义类信息的促进作用最显著,策略和案例类信息通过知识语义类信息间接影响协作学习效果,管理类信息不仅能够直接影响协作学习效果,同时还可以通过作用于答案类信息而间接影响协作学习效果。个案研究还发现,协作学习效果较好的小组中,教师输出的元认知类信息多于认知类信息,教师主要通过计划策略指导学生有效完成协作学习任务。     

Differentiation of the Curriculum for the Highly Able

It is possible to distinguish between structural and integral forms of curriculum provision for highly able students. Both these forms offer advantages and disadvantages, while there are also particular problems associated with enrichment. Three common forms of differentiation under the integral umbrella are by inputs, by outputs, or by developmental differentiation. Of these, developmental differentiation is the most appropriate. Its theoretical context can be matched to the needs which able students are reported to have. Translated into a practical methodology for use in schools and colleges, six types of cognitive process pedagogies which provide the appropriate curriculum enrichment can be identified: Games and simulation, cognitive study skills, real problem solving and investigative learning, collaborative learning, experiential learning and language experience methods. These facilitate the development of higher order cognitive and metacognitive skills and offer challenge in all content areas.