Metacognitive monitoring and learning gain in foundation chemistry

Abstract

The ability to make realistic judgements of one's performance is a demonstration of the possession of strong metacognitive skills. In this study we investigate the relationship between accuracy of selfevaluation as an expression of metacognitive skill, and learning gain in stoichiometry. The context is an academic development programme at a South African University, offered for under-prepared students enrolled for science and engineering. These students generally exhibit unrealistically high levels of confidence in performance and this could potentially place them at risk by negatively affecting decisions regarding time management and self-regulation. We investigated whether overconfidence before instruction is corrected upon exposure to teaching. A three-tier stoichiometry test was used to collect qualitative and quantitative data before and after instruction. Findings indicate that the majority of the students were overconfident in the evaluation of their performance in both the pre-and posttests. Overconfidence was not a debilitating disposition when demonstrated in the pretest provided that it was corrected during teaching and learning. The most vulnerable students were those that judged their performance or lack thereof realistically in the pretest but became overconfident during the teaching and learning of stoichiometry. Our results suggest that under-prepared students are slow to develop accurate metacognitive monitoring skills within a classroom environment that did not include instruction focused on the development of such skills. We recommend a proactive and constructive response by educators which may reduce the incidence of failure and preserve the positive contribution of confidence, albeit excessively positive.

Perceived autonomy-support, expectancy, value, metacognitive strategies and performance in chemistry: a structural equation model in undergraduates

“…This finding suggests that the undergraduates who best planned, monitored and evaluated the process of chemistry problem-solving also obtained higher grades in this subject. These findings agree with previous research in which metacognition enhanced chemistry learning (Thomas and McRobbie, 2013;Mathabathe and Potgieter, 2014; Thomas and Anderson, 2014), achievement in chemistry lab activities (Sandi-Urena et al, 2011b, 2011c and results in chemistry problem-solving (Cooper and Sandi-Urena, 2009;Sandi-Urena et al, 2011a;Scherer and Tiemann, 2012).…”

Metacognition in Chemistry Education: A Literature Review

“…Mathabathe and Potgieter, 2014 [40] Metacognitive monitoring and learning gain in foundation chemistry. 91 Mathabathe and Potgiete, 2017 [41] Manifestations of metacognitive activity during the collaborative planning of chemistry practical investigations 39 Sandi-Urena, Cooper, and Stevens, 2011 [42] Enhancement of metacognition use and awareness by means of a collaborative intervention~1…”

“…González and Paoloni, 2015 [38] Planning Evaluation Monitoring None Hawker et al, 2016 [39] Evaluation a None Mathabathe and Potgieter, 2014 [40] Declarative knowledge Procedural knowledge Evaluation None Mathabathe and Potgiete, 2017 [41] Planning Evaluation Monitoring None Sandi-urena et al, 2011 [42] Planning Evaluation Monitoring…”

“…[36] Two inverse findings which also strengthen the importance of explicit metacognitive regulation were that implicit metacognitive monitoring on its own did not improve students' learning performance [39] and that merely teaching students to compensate for overconfidence in predicting their exam scores did not help to achieve better prediction by those students. [40] The majority of studies we found in HE focused on individual students and on use of quantitative measures of metacognition, mostly self-reporting questionnaires. Only two studies in HE involved learning in teams.…”

Students' mind wandering in macroscopic and submicroscopic textual narrations and its relationship with their reading comprehension

“…Obviously, these cognitive demands are not necessarily at the same extensive level when dealing with macroscopic entities and processes. In fact, metacognitive skills play an important role in students' performance in chemistry (Taber, 2013;Mathabathe and Potgieter, 2014). This helps our brains to chunk information by relating new knowledge to existing mental schemata and thus reduces the load on the memory span (Taber, 2013).…”