Emily Marshman Metacognition Reaction Paper 13

The meta-analysis of self-regulation training programs by Dignath, Buettner, and Langfeldt was a very good summary of elementary school self-regulation training programs. I found many of their results quite interesting. Even for children in grades 1-6, they found that self-regulated learning training programs have a positive effect on learning outcomes, strategy use, and motivation. Interventions that were based on social-cognitive theory or a combination of social-cognitive and metacognitive theories led to the highest effect sizes. I believe that even older children and young adults would benefit from social-cognitive and metacognitive interventions. When learners are active participants in the learning process, they make better connections while learning by explaining the concepts to other students and questioning other students.

It is interesting that motivational strategies had a large effect size on the dependent variables for young students, although I agree with the authors that this may have less of an effect for older children and young adults. Young children may be more motivated to learn, yet this motivation decreases the longer they are in school. Thus, social-cognitive interventions and metacognitive-cognitive interventions should probably be used for older children and young adults.

I also really like their point that interventions should be integrative, considering cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational factors when investigating self-regulated learning. In my opinion, I think all three factors play a large, interconnected role in self-regulation. Additionally, students should be provided with knowledge about strategy application and its benefits. Student “buy-in” is very important if they are to benefit from an intervention, even for young adults in college. We must explain why an intervention will help them in their endeavors if we want them to engage in it. Otherwise, the intervention may take up valuable resources that they would rather use to learn and study (or even cram). In physics, we often use “clicker questions” which are used as discussion questions. Most students would sit silently thinking about the question unless they are explicitly told to discuss the question with a partner because it helps them verbalize and organize their knowledge.

However, I found their assertions about group work confusing. They said that effect sizes were higher for interventions that did not train students by means of group work, but in Table 12, the mean effect size for group work was 0.80 and for no group work was 0.48. So I was very confused by their discussion of those results. I always thought that if group work is appropriately implemented by the instructor, students would benefit by discussing problems with their peers.

In the article by Masui and De Corte, I liked that they designed the intervention in a real study context. However, I found their measurement instruments and analysis somewhat odd. They gave a knowledge test on metacognitive, affect, and conative activities. If a student mentioned more ways to plan their study time on a test, they would receive a higher score. They also asked the students about their personal characteristics. To test for transfer, they administered a questionnaire which contained eleven questions about study activities and experiences in a statistics course (as opposed to a macro-economics course). In my opinion, if metacognitive strategies such as orientation and self-judging behavior are developed, they should be tested in an academic context. The authors mentioned that there was a positive correlation between the study result for the statistics course and several measures of orienting behavior. However, I would have liked to have seen a table with the experimental group and control group which compared the mean scores on the statistics test and their mean scores on the orientation and self-judging activities. They described their results in words, but I would have liked to have

Emily Marshman Metacognition Reaction Paper 13

seen how all the groups compare, like they did in the other tables throughout the paper. I would like to know whether certain metacognitive skills can be trained and whether or not students who use more of these skills do better academically. This article did not convince me of that.