Students’ Metacognitive Awareness in Natural Science Learning: An Overview by Gender

This study aimed to identify the metacognitive awareness of high school students in natural science learning based on gender. This research is a descriptive study with a sample of 24 students. Data on students' metacognition awareness was collected using the Metacognition Awareness Inventory (MAI) which was analyzed descriptively and statistically. The results showed that students' metacognitive awareness was categorized as good enough (1.33 < MA ≤ 2.33) and low (MA ≥ 1.33). Students' metacognition awareness was not significantly different in terms of gender (p> 0.05). Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that metacognitive awareness needs to be improved through good interventions in learning. Student gender differences need to be investigated further using a larger sample to obtain more relevant and comprehensive data on metacognitive awareness

Second language listening comprehension: The role of anxiety and enjoyment in listening metacognitive awareness

Emotion in second language acquisition (SLA) has recently received greater attention because it is largely implicated in daily conversations, which may affect second or foreign language (L2) use including listening comprehension. Most research into emotion and L2 listening comprehension is focused exclusively on anxiety, with an attempt to reduce its negative effects on individuals’ listening performance. With the arrival of positive psychology in SLA, researchers began to take a holistic view of a wider range of emotions including enjoyment that language learners experience during their L2 communication. The current study explored the relationships among listening anxiety, enjoyment, listening comprehension performance, and listening metacognitive awareness among a group of 410 international students in a Canadian university. Correlational analyses showed that listening anxiety was negatively correlated with enjoyment. However, these two variables shared only 18% of their variance, indicating that listening anxiety and enjoyment are related but independent emotions. This study suggests that anxiety and enjoyment in L2 listening are not the opposite ends of the same emotional continuum, but each serves a different purpose. L2 learners should work to find intriguing and enjoyable experiences in language learning, rather than focusing merely on reducing anxiety.

Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategy Use between Field-Dependent and Field-Independent EFL Learners

This paper aimed to study the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies between field-dependent (FD)and field-independent (FI) Turkish EFL university students who are learning English as a foreign language. To this end, 270 students from Istanbul (Cerrahpasa) University were chosen.First, Group Embedded Figure Test was used to appoint the participants into either FD or FI groups.After this, participants’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategy was assessed by using MARSI-R (Metacognitive Awareness of reading Strategies Inventory-Revised). Recently revised by Mokhtari et al., the MARSI-R instrument contains 15 items and measures three large sets of strategies including: Global Reading Strategies (GRS), Problem-Solving Strategies (PSS) and Support Reading Strategies (SRS).The results showed that the students reported using the 3 categories of strategies almost at a high-frequency level and they were aware of their metacognitive strategies. And statistically significant difference was found between FI and FD students regarding their use of GRS and SRS, hence, the use of students’ metacognitive reading strategies was affected by their different FI/FD cognitive styles.

Sources of confidence in value-based choice

Confidence, the subjective estimate of decision quality, is a cognitive process necessary for learning from mistakes and guiding future actions. The origins of confidence judgments resulting from economic decisions remain unclear. We devise a task and computational framework that allowed us to formally tease apart the impact of various sources of confidence in value-based decisions, such as uncertainty emerging from encoding and decoding operations, as well as the interplay between gaze-shift dynamics and attentional effort. In line with canonical decision theories, trial-to-trial fluctuations in the precision of value encoding impact economic choice consistency. However, this uncertainty has no influence on confidence reports. Instead, confidence is associated with endogenous attentional effort towards choice alternatives and down-stream noise in the comparison process. These findings provide an explanation for confidence (miss)attributions in value-guided behaviour, suggesting mechanistic influences of endogenous attentional states for guiding decisions and metacognitive awareness of choice certainty.

The Relationship between Metacognitive Awareness and Academic Success of Medical students at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: Students' academic success is one of the important indicators of evaluating the performance of the higher education system. One of the factors influencing academic success is metacognitive awareness and knowledge and control of thinking and cognition. Therefore, assessment of its status helps in planning its promotion. The study aimed to investigate the relationship between metacognitive awareness and academic success of medical students at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. Methods: Pearson parametric correlation was performed after stratified sampling method concerning 255 medical students with Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) of Schraw & Dennison (1994) with eight subscales and scoring of zero (incorrect) and one (correct). For academic success, the total grade point average was measured. The reliability and validity of the inventory were also determined. Result: Out of 255 participants, 95 (37.3%) were male and 160 (62.7%) were female. The minimum and maximum ages were 19 and 26 years, respectively. Totally, 85 first-year students, 85 after-the-basic-sciences exam students, and 85 senior learners were present. The lowest and highest grade point averages were 10.9 and 19.6, respectively. The relationship between academic success and metacognitive awareness in general in all students using Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.791 at a significant level of 0.0001. There was the highest correlation between GPA and subscales of real knowledge as for metacognition and metacognition control, and information management. In all students, the highest mean rank of metacognitive skills was related to the dimension of performance effectiveness and strategy analysis. Conclusion: There exists a relationship between students' metacognitive awareness and academic success at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences which can be used in educational planning.

METACOGNITIVE AWARENESS OF LISTENING STRATEGIES AND PERCEPTION OF LISTENING SKILL DURING REMOTE LEARNING

The online classes associated with the Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in the magnitude of remote learning of ESL (English as a second language). Sustaining the quality of teaching and learning of listening skills has become more challenging for everyone. Listening is one of the fundamental skills to acquire knowledge in an academic setting. Every instructor and learner need to perceive that listening is not an innate skill, understand the processes involved in listening comprehension, and integrate strategies while listening. The present study explores Metacognitive Awareness of Listening Strategies (MALS) and students’ perceptions about learning listening skills during remote learning. The current study was conducted through a multimethod research design where both quantitative and qualitative data were involved. Two instruments were utilised, which are the Metacognitive Awareness of Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) and the online discussion board. The participants were chosen based on simple random sampling consisting of 51 pre-university students enrolled in the Science Foundation programme in the 2020/2021 session. The first part of the results depicted students had an average level of MALS with directed attention strategies as the factor with the highest average. The second part of the results reported that students who scored a higher average score of MALS tend to use problem-solving strategies. Lastly, the board postings were analysed thematically and categorised to three different themes which are challenges, strategies, and activities of learning skills. It is hoped that this study will shed light on empirical strategies and evidence of listening practices during online classes. Both teachers and learners may have clearer insights on how to manage listening comprehension effort and use learning inherent to tackle remote learning.