This study asked two questions. First, to what extent can metacognitive strategies instruction increase metacognitive awareness in released-time seminary students? Second, if metacognitive awareness is increased, is this increase correlated with changes in released-time seminary students' attitudes towards scripture study, their scripture study behavior, how they perceive the quality of their study, and how much they enjoy studying the scriptures? A control group and two experimental groups were used for this study. Experimental group 1 was taught basic scripture reading strategies without metacognition. Experimental group 2 was taught metacognitive strategies related to scripture study. Students in each experimental group used these strategies for 10 consecutive class sessions. Pre- and post-survey data was collected for comparison. Statistically significant gains in metacognitive awareness were found when comparing the pre- and post-survey scores of experimental group 2. When comparing experimental group 2 to experimental group 1 and the control group, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) demonstrated that these gains in metacognitive awareness were not significant by comparison. Students in experimental groups 1 and 2 were asked to rate themselves in the post-survey on the effort they expended utilizing the strategies presented. When students in experimental group 2 who rated themselves high for effort were isolated, an analysis of covariance yielded statistically significant gains for metacognitive awareness in comparison with the other two groups. The same analyses were performed on measures related to scripture study. While experimental group 2 showed statistically significant gains from pre-survey to post-survey, when analyzed against experimental group 1 and the control group, no significant changes were observed. This was also the case for students who rated themselves high for effort in implementing the strategies presented. The results from this study suggest that metacognitive strategies can increase metacognitive awareness in released-time seminary students when they put forth the required effort to learn them. Further research in metacognitive application to scripture study is warranted. Qualitative studies with small focus groups could be a valuable avenue of exploration in future studies.

American schools have been struggling with improving achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics for decades. For the last four decades, the overall mathematics performance of 17 year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress has not shown any significant improvement. Mathematics teachers can use metacognitive techniques to make immediate adjustments in instruction that may assist students in becoming more skillful problem solvers. The purpose of this study was to provide new knowledge about the potential predictors of mathematics teachers' use of the six subfactors of the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory for Teachers. The inventory was administered to 120 K-12 grade teachers from the membership list of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics via an online survey. Multiple regression analysis indicates that there are significant differences among the participants in the influence of potential predictor variables for declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge, planning awareness, and monitoring awareness. The positive β coefficient indicates that the number of years of teaching experience plays a role in increasing the mathematics teachers' awareness of metacognition, β=.207, p

During my time as a student of education I have learnt that it is my responsibility, as a teacher, to adjust the ways in which I teach to the needs, abilities, experiences, and thoughts of each individual child. What I have not yet gained much knowledge on is how to go about finding the children’s thoughts. In this thesis I investigate the interview as a method of finding out how sixth graders think about their mathematics education. Four children were interviewed. In addition to these inter-views, as a means of giving a broader perspective to and a greater understanding of the chil-dren’s answers, one math lesson was filmed and the math teacher was interview on two sepa-rate occasions. What I found was that a number of factors seemed to influence the children’s thoughts and answers, and that their answers were most likely not always a mirror of their thoughts. From this follows that we, as teachers, must be careful and not assume that we know about a child’s thoughts when, in fact, what we know is what the child chooses to communicate about his or her thoughts. I also found that the children seemed unaccustomed to speaking about mathe-matics in the way that I wanted them to. One reason for this seemed to be the way in which their teacher organized the lessons.

Research studies indicated that differences in cognitive processing style influence individual behavior on various types of tasks. This study investigated the effect of the cognitive style dimension, field independence-dependence, on the metacognitive functioning of individuals involved in three problem tasks which varied in inherent structure. Twenty-six subjects were randomly selected from a pool of one hundred and two pre-service teachers who completed the Group Embedded Figures Test to determine levels of field independence-dependence. Subjects were asked to verbalize their thinking while solving three types of problems. The think aloud protocols were analyzed using a coded analysis technique. The Checklist of Metacognitive Behavior (CMB) was the classification system developed to perform the coded analysis. The CMB contained four major categories: planning, monitoring, evaluation and affect. Criterion behaviors in each category were identified in the protocols from surface language structure. Behaviors identified in the protocol analysis were assigned points. Analysis of variance was used to compare mean scores from the CMB for total and category scores on each problem. Significant differences were found between field independents and field dependents for total and category scores on problem one, the puzzle-type problem. No differences were found between the groups on the semi-structured and ill-structured problems. Field independents exhibited a greater number and variety of monitoring and evaluation behaviors on the structured problem. Cognitive style preference had no significant impact on the type and number of metacognitive behaviors observed on the semi-structured and ill-structured problems. / Graduation date: 1990

Distinctive encoding is the processing of unique item-specific information in the context of more general relational or organizational information. It enhances memory performance for both younger and older adults (Smith, 2006). The current work examined how adults use distinctive encoding to aid their free recall performance and whether task experience alters subsequent use of a distinctive encoding strategy. At study participants saw a series of five-item taxonomically categorized lists (e.g., FRUITS). They were first required to generate a category-consistent label (e.g., TASTY FRUIT). In the guided condition, they were then required to generate a single word representing either (1) another category-consistent characteristic (e.g., GROWS) or (2) a characteristic that distinguished a study target from the other items (e.g., FUZZY for the target KIWI). In the self-initiated condition, participants were allowed to select an encoding strategy on their own. After test, all participants completed a second study-test phase with self-initiated strategies. Younger adults initially rated distinctive encoding as more effective, relative to relational encoding, than did older adults, and this difference persisted after test experience, indicating an age difference in learning about the relative superiority of distinctive processing. Consistent with these ratings, distinctive encoding was implemented more so by unguided younger adults than older adults in phase 1. However, both strategy use and recall performance were similar across age and study conditions in phase 2. Both older and younger adults were capable of utilizing distinctive encoding effectively following task experience, although perceptions of strategic effectiveness did not always correspond to self-initiated study behaviors.

Because maximizing the learning of new material is a relevant concern for most individuals, understanding the specific processes involved could be beneficial for people of all ages. Both encoding and monitoring occur during the learning acquisition phase, yet monitoring accuracy and subsequent neural activation have been relatively ignored in the literature. The current research adapts a common metacognitive paradigm using Judgments of Learning (JOLs) to explore the neural differences in monitoring between younger (18-25) and older (65+) adults. Participants were asked to remember natural scenes and predict encoding success by providing a JOL response for each item. Participants were told to respond “will remember” if they believed they would remember that item on a later recognition memory test or “will forget” if they thought they would forget that item on a later recognition memory test. Actual memory performance was compared to predicted memory performance to provide a measure of monitoring accuracy. Individuals reported a JOL response for 150 intact (Easy) and 150 scrambled (Difficult) scenes while in a 3.0T fMRI scanner. Despite minimal differences in behavioral performance, there were several age-related neuroimaging findings of note. When compared to younger adults, older adults had decreases in medial temporal lobe (MTL) activation, as well as contralateral recruitment of the anterior cingulate. Most importantly, the present study also disambiguated structures related to encoding success (the right parahippocampus) and monitoring accuracy (the anterior cingulate). A novel account of neural structures that mediate monitoring is provided both across items varying in difficulty (Easy and Difficult) and across different age groups (Young and Old). Encoding and monitoring are important for learning acquisition and the present research provides the first account that successfully disambiguates the two processes. Results are discussed in reference to their educational implications on resource allocation during the learning of new material.

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to explore the interplay of prospective secondary mathematics teachers’ affect, metacognition, and mathematical cognition in a problem-solving context. From a social constructivist epistemological paradigm and using a constructivist grounded theory approach, the main research question guiding the study was: What is the characterization of the interplay among prospective teachers’ mathematical beliefs, mathematical behavior, and mathematical knowledge in the context of solving mathematics problems? I conducted four interviews with four prospective secondary mathematics teachers enrolled in an undergraduate mathematics course. Participant artifacts, observations, and researcher reflections were regularly recorded and included as part of the data collection. The theory that emerged from the study is grounded in the participants’ mathematics problem-solving experiences and it depicts the interplay among affect, metacognition, and mathematical cognition as meta-affect, persistence and autonomy, and meta-strategic knowledge. For the participants, “Knowing How and Knowing Why” mathematics procedures work and having the ability to justify their reasoning and problem solutions represented mathematics knowledge and understanding that could empower them to become productive problem-solvers and effective secondary mathematics teachers. The results of the study also indicated that the participants interpreted their experiences with difficult, challenging problem-solving situations as opportunities to learn and understand mathematics deeply. Although they experienced fear, frustration, and disappointment in difficult problem-solving and mathematics-learning situations, they viewed such difficulty with the expectation that feelings of satisfaction, joy, pride, and confidence would occur because of their mathematical understanding. In problem-solving situations, affect, metacognition, and mathematics cognition interacted in a way that resulted in mathematics understanding that was productive and empowering for these prospective teachers. The theory resulting from this study has implications for prospective teachers, teacher education, curriculum development, and mathematics education research.

This project introduces a judgment of source learning (JOSL), an evaluative judgment by which participants make predictions about their ability to remember the source or modality of stimuli in the future (at test). The JOSL is an open-ended judgment that encapsulates a) participants confidence in the information they are able to retrieve at the time of the judgment, b) participants confidence in the strategy that they are using for retrieval, and c) participants confidence in how effective their current retrieval and monitoring strategies will be in the future. Younger and older adults studied a paired associate list comprised of unrelated text-sound, or text-picture stimuli. They provided judgments of learning for paired-associate memory (JOLs), and some provided judgments of source learning for target source memory (JOSLs). Participants also provided strategy reports for study. JOSLs did not reliably predict source recall, and level of source recall varied as a function of target type rather than condition. Age differences were found in JOL resolution, where younger adults were more accurate in their prediction of future paired associate memory than older adults. Confidence gammas showed that both younger and older adults could reliably identify which items they answered correctly; however, the confidence gamma for source recall of sound targets was reliably negative, mostly likely a result of a PICTURE response bias and overconfidence in wrongly source attributed sound targets.

Based on the importance place of metacognition in education, the current study aimed to investigate whether the embedded metacognitive prompts in the manual lead a change in PSTs&rsquo / metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive skills. Throught 2009-2010 Fall semester, the data were collected from pre-service science teachers (PSTs) who enrolled in the Laboratory Applications in Science Education course. The course was offered as a must course in Elementary Science Education programme in one of the biggest universites in Ankara. The method selected for the study was mix method. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analyzed. Quantitative data was collected from 28 PSTs and qualitative data was collected from 7 PSTs who were the members of the researcher&rsquo / s group. In accordance with the purpose of the current study, descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test was conducted for quantitative data. In terms of qualitative part, the study was case study and interviews which were conducted before and after the course were analyzed to observe the change of PSTs&rsquo / metacognition. The result of the study revealed that before the course most of the PSTs did not report metacognitive skills. After the course it was observed that their metacognitive skills were developed. Among metacognitive skills, the most reported skill was monitoring skill after the course. It can be concluded from the study that metacognitive prompts embedded into the manual provided a metacognitively learning environment and a development in PSTs&rsquo / metacognition.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-55).