Mathematics Teachers' Encouragement of Their Students' Metacognitive Processes

Area of Science:

• Educational Psychology
• Teacher Training

Background:

• Limited research exists on teacher practices fostering student metacognition.
• Metacognition, encompassing planning, monitoring, regulating, and evaluating, is crucial for learning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a questionnaire measuring teachers' encouragement of students' metacognitive practices.
• To quantitatively assess current levels of teacher encouragement for student metacognition.
• To investigate demographic influences (gender, academic qualification, experience) on these practices.

Main Methods:

• Development and validation of a novel questionnaire for metacognitive practices.
• Quantitative analysis using one-sample t-test, independent-sample t-test, and one-way ANOVA.
• Assessment of teacher encouragement across planning, monitoring, regulating, and evaluating.

Main Results:

• Teachers exhibit normal, good, and very good levels of encouraging student metacognition.
• Significant gender differences were found in planning and regulating, but not monitoring or evaluating.
• No significant differences were observed based on academic qualification or years of teaching experience.

Conclusions:

• Teachers generally foster student metacognition effectively.
• Gender plays a role in specific metacognitive strategy encouragement.
• Teacher's academic background and experience do not significantly influence their methods for promoting student metacognition.