Making Students’ Metacognitive Knowledge Visible through Reflective Writing - Weekly Online Reflection Activity and Assessment

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by jay

Metacognitive knowledge directly supports learning, performance, and learners’ beliefs about themselves. This paper presents the rationale, implementation, and assessment of a weekly online reflection activity for post-secondary students preparing to become elementary school teachers. It defines four categories of metacognitive knowledge aligned with course goals and student characteristics. Coding 71 students’ responses to four reflection prompts across three course offerings examines how different prompt emphases elicit different metacognitive knowledge categories.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Literature on Metacognition

Metacognition and Metacognitive Knowledge

Need for Explicit Instruction

Course Overview and Reflection Activity Design

Research Questions and Methodology

Data Analysis: Four Categories of Metacognitive Knowledge

Findings and Contributions

Making Students’ Metacognitive Knowledge Visible through Reflective 2016 CELT Vol IX [celt. uwindsor.ca](celt. uwindsor.ca) [www.stlhe.ca](www.stlhe.ca) Writing in a Mathematics-for-Teachers Course Petra Menz and Cindy Xin Simon Fraser University Metacognition directly contributes to learning, performance, and beliefs about the self as a learner. This paper describes the rationale, implementation, and assessment of a weekly online reflection activity based on instructor prompts designedfor post-secondary students who aspire to be elementary schoolteachers. Our study defines four categories of metacognitive knowledge that speak to the specific goals of the course and the characteristics of the students. Using these categories, 71 students’written responses to four reflection prompts from three course offerings were coded, and their effects were examined in terms of types of metacognitive knowledge demonstrated. Our results not only confirm that students were engaged in metacognition through the reflection activity but also show that students exhibited different categories of metacognitive knowledge in relation to the varying emphases of the prompts. Introduction Metacognition has been shown to be a powerful predictor of learning (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Veenman & Spaans, 2005; Veenman, Wilhelm, & Beishuizen, 2004; Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1990) . Flavell coined the term in the late 1970s to mean one’s knowledge about and regulation of one’s cognitive processes (Flavell, 1979) . Determining when, where, and how ideas apply helps students to deal with increasingly complex problems (Erickson, Peters, & Strommer, 2009) . However, college and university teachers are continually surprised at the number of students who arrive with very little metacognitive knowledge, knowledge about different strategies or cognitive tasks, and in particular, accurate knowledge about themselves (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Tanner, 2012) . When it comes to learning mathematics, it is our experience that many students who aspire to become school teachers not only demonstrate very little knowledge about how they learn or how they should learn, but also experience a phobia toward mathematics. In addition, they often exhibit low selfesteem about their ability to learn mathematics and have a simplistic, and often incorrect, view of what doing and thinking mathematics is about. Our experience has been echoed by others (Ball, Hill, & Bass, 2005; Ma & Xu, 2004; Pape & Smith, 2002) . Teachers’habits, confidences, and beliefs influence their classroom practices, which in turn impacts their own students’ learning (Beilock, Gunderson, Ramirez, & Levine, 2010; Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002) . It is important for teacher preparation programs to address these issues early, consistently, and persistently. In spite of the challenges, research has shown explicit instruction has a positive effect on improving metacognitive capability for a broad range of learners (Veenman, Elshout, & Busato, 1994) and particularly for weak students (Pressley & Gaskins, 2006) . With this in mind, we have purposefully designed, implemented, and assessed a weekly reflective writing activity using prompts for a mathematics-for-teachers course. The activity engages students in thinking about their learning and themselves as learners. The ethics review board of our university approved the study, as it is considered quality improvement. This paper is organized into six sections. We begin with a brief literature review on metacognition and metacognitive knowledge, the need for explicit instruction, and the assessment of metacognitive knowledge. Then, we provide an overview of the course and design of the reflection activity. Next, we present our research questions and methodology, which is followed by the data analysis. Specifically, we detail our analysis pertaining to the four categories of metacognitive knowledge that we have identified. We conclude by discu

FAQs

What is the weekly online reflection activity designed to achieve?

The activity is designed to engage students in thinking about their learning and themselves as learners through instructor prompts.

How are students’ metacognitive knowledge responses analyzed in this study?

Responses to four reflection prompts are coded based on four categories of metacognitive knowledge, and effects are examined in relation to the prompts’ varying emphases.

Why does the paper emphasize explicit instruction in metacognition?

Metacognitive knowledge is not easily acquired, and research cited in the paper shows explicit instruction can improve metacognitive capability, especially for weaker students.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by jay