The unidimensionality and overestimation of metacognitive awareness in children:validating the CATOM

Abstract

Título: Unidimensionalidad y sobreestimación de la conciencia metacognitiva en niños: Validación del CATOM. Resumen. Los niños normalmente tienen dificultades para informar sobre su funcionamiento metacognitivo, hecho que, con frecuencia, les lleva a sobrevalorarse en situaciones de aprendizaje. Por tanto, este estudio pretende comprender cómo los niños (n = 1029) informan sobre su funcionamiento metacognitivo y ofrece una primera aproximación a la medición de la conciencia metacognitiva (CM) en niños. Así, tras observar que los resultados de un análisis factorial exploratorio indican que el instrumento de medida presenta una estructura unidimensional, se aplicó la Teoría de Respuesta al Ítem para analizar dicha unidimensionalidad así como las interacciones entre los participantes y los ítems. Los resultados indican una buena fiabilidad tanto ítem (.87) como persona (.87), con un alfa de Cronbach .95 para la dimensión CM. Además, los resultados corroboran la tendencia de los niños a sobreestimar su funcionamiento metacognitivo y sugieren que el instrumento tiene un alto potencial tanto para la investigación como para la práctica profesional. Palabras clave: metacognición, conocimiento metacognitivo, habilidades metacognitivas, aprendizaje autoregulado, Teoría de Respuesta al Ítem.Abstract. Children often have difficulty in reporting their metacognitive functioning, which leads them to frequently overrating themselves under learning situations. Hence, this study presents a preliminary approach of how children's metacognitive awareness (MA) can be measured. Essentially, this study aims to understand how children (n =1029) report their metacognitive functioning. In a first analysis, EFA revealed a unidimensional structure of the instrument (MK and MS). Item Response Theory was then used to analyse the unidimensionality of the dimension and the interactions between participants and items. Results revealed good item reliability (.87) and good person reliability (.87) with good Cronbach's α for MA (.95). These results show the potential of the instrument, as well as a tendency of children to overrate their metacognitive functioning. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed. Key words: Metacognition, Metacognitive Knowledge, Metacognitive Skills, Self-regulated Learning, Item Response Theory. 1*) IntroductionThe literature on self-regulation (Pintrich, 2000) considers metacognition as one of its important components because it consists of individuals' knowledge of their own cognitive and affective processes, including their ability to consciously and intentionally monitor and regulate these processes (Hacker, 1998). Flavell (1976) first defined metacognition as active monitoring and subsequent regulation and management of processed information regarding concrete goals or objectives. Later, Efklides (2008) described metacognition as being a "critical component of the self-regulation process because" (p. 283) it includes self-awareness, which in turn, involves past experiences, beliefs and goals, as w...

Perceiving learning regulation with Moodle: Implications for guidance

“…Specifically, there was an overestimation of how they planned, performed, and monitored, and reflected and evaluated their work. These results are in line with those of other studies (Ferreira et al, 2015a). However, the present study focused on middle school students and did not contemplate a particular discipline.…”

Relations among personal initiative and the development of reading strategy knowledge and reading comprehension

“…), we observed that fifth grade students more frequently reported to be familiar with this strategy than sixth grade students. This is in accordance with findings that younger children's metacognitive self-reports are prone to overestimation (e.g., Ferreira, Simão, & da Silva, 2015). However, regardless of the underlying mechanism (i.e., utilization deficiency or overestimation), our findings complement results of previous studies in which reading strategy knowledge seemed to be more highly related with reading performance at higher grade levels (e.g., Kolić-Vehovec et al, 2014;van Kraayenoord & Schneider, 1999).…”

Dynamic assessment of self-regulated learning in preschool

“…Moreover, the questioning approach applied in this study seems to be feasible to replicate in daily educational practices, promoting experiences where children are actively engaged in the learning process. The goal of such opportunities should help them to overcome obstacles and progressively learn to think about thinking – metacognitive awareness ( Ferreira et al., 2015 ; Marulis et al., 2016 ; Romera, 2003 ). Analyzing the IRT low-reliability levels, we advocate that those results were not due to the difficulty of the items.…”

“…Therefore, different types of measures were used in each phase seeking to capture SRL processes from a dynamic, cyclical, and multidimensional perspective. The specific measures considered the developmental characteristics of the children (Ferreira, Veiga Simão, & Silva, 2015;Lopes da Silva et al, 2004), such as their difficulty to speak about self-regulatory processes. Self-reported data was complemented by other sources, namely observation data and the product of the task, with a view to data triangulation.…”

“…We found this analysis to be reliable and conceptually powerful ( Embretson and Reise, 2000 ) and it could give some good indicators for the items' adequacy for preschool children. Some previous studies had already applied this analysis ( Camilli and Kim, 2018 ; Ferreira et al., 2015 ; Francisco et al., 2015 ; Stevenson et al., 2013 ; Tibi et al., 2021 ) and its innovative approach seams promising. Specifically, we proceeded with the Rasch analysis ( Rasch, 1980 ) with the Winsteps program ( Linacre, 2019 ) to study the internal consistency of the instrument's items, how the task fit participants and how children perceived the difficulty level of the task.…”