Variations in Students' Metacognitive Awareness: A Semester-Long Study in STEM Classrooms

Abstract

To foster students’ self-regulatory skills, metacognitive strategies have been widely encouraged in disciplinary teaching practices. Classroom research has shown that students encounter problems in transferring and applying learned concepts to different contexts, especially in STEM fields. However, differences through the use of metacognitive intervention have been observed across student levels and in students’ class performance. This study aims to understand the variations in students’ metacognitive awareness across class levels and disciplines in STEM fields. To assess students' basic level of metacognition, we administered the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) assessment at the beginning and end of the semester in multiple STEM classrooms. Our results showed that natural growth of overall metacognitive awareness is not significant in all students, suggesting the need for targeted interventions. STEM disciplines and student academic levels are factors leading to the significant differences in students’ developing metacognitive skills. Within the same discipline, biology, our findings revealed a substantial variance of metacognition between entry-level and upper-level students, primarily centered around metacognitive knowledge, indicating the critical necessity to enhance entry-level students' cognition-related knowledge early on in their academic journey.