Running head : Use of Metacognition
Title: Use of Metacognition in a Final Year High School Biology Class
Author: L. N. Conner
Affliliation: Monash University, Melbourne and Christchurch College of Education,
New Zealand
Address for Correspondence:
Dr Lindsey Conner
Christchurch College of Education
P. O. Box 31 065
Christchurch 8030
Phone: 64 03 343 7780 X8463
Fax: 64 03 343 7784
E:miail: lindsey.conner@cce.ac.nz
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Use of Metacognition in a Final-year High School Biology Class
Abstract
This paper reports on the levels of awareness and use of metacognitive strategies by 16
students in a final-year high school biology class in New Zealand. The aims of the
intervention were to broaden students’ thinking about bioethical issues associated with
cancer and to enhance students’ use of metacognition. Cues and prompts were used in
this unit of work to help students use metacognitive strategies since students did not
generally use metacognitive strategies spontaneously or were not self-starting in terms of
evaluating their learning strategies. Scaffolding was mediated through the teacher
modelling, questioning, cueing or prompting students to evaluate their learning. Three
case studies illustrate how the learning strategies were used differentially. Most students
were aware of strategies that could help them to learn more effectively. It was found that
those students who not only knew but also used metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor
and evaluate their work, produced essays of higher quality.
Keywords: cueing, intentional learning, metacogniiton, self-evaluation
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Metacognition
Metacognition can involve a range of thinking processes, such as knowing about different
ways to think, an awareness of how one thinks, and controlling one’s own thinking
(Flavell, 1976). In order for people to use metacognition to enhance their learning, they
need to be aware of their own learning tendencies as well as willing to be introspective
(Borkowski, Carr, Rellinger, & Pressley, 1990; Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1983; White,
1998) and willing to be flexible in how they choose to learn so that they consider when it
is appropriate to use particular strategies for learning (Siegler, 1990). Through a
willingness to consider conditional aspects, it is more likely that students will develop
abilities to evaluate, self-direct and self-regulate their learning (Boekaerts, 1997; Paris &
Winograd, 1990; Winne, 1996) and hence become more intentional learners. Getting
students to consider conditional aspects of their learning is an important part of learning
and has not been emphasised in previous interventions that focussed on the promotion of
metacognition. Previous studies in science education have tended to focus on the
development of metacognition in general (Baird, 1986; Thomas and McRobbie, 2001;
White and Gunstone, 1989) rather than on specific metacognitive strategies.
Various studies have shown that learning can be enhanced if students use metacognitive
processes, that is, if they know, monitor and control their own learning (White &
Gunstone, 1989; Baird, 1998; Hacker, 1998). In general terms, good learners have been
shown to be metacognitively adept and poor ones metacognitively deficient in how they
tackle learning tasks in most subjects (Baird, 1992; Baird, 1992; Baird, 1998; Shuell,
1988; Wang & Peverly, 1986). However, these studies have not documented how
students’ degree of awareness or use of metacognition links with their learning outcomes.
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In this study, trends in the awareness and use of specific metacogntiive strategies have
been linked with the students’ achievement in essays.
It is likely that all learners are metacognitive to some extent (Gunstone,1994). The degree
of awareness of metacognitive processing will influence the extent to which individuals
preferentially deploy strategies. Without prompting, students intuitively interpret tasks
according to what they think the task demands, which means that most students apply
their knowledge of strategies as best they can. However, their strategy choice may or may
not be task appropriate. If teachers want to help students to develop metacognition, then it
is imperative that they actively encourage students to choose strategies for particular
learning situations. This can be done through the direct teaching of learning strategies or
by incorporating them more subtly into tasks that students are required to do (Derry,
1990). Teachers can assist students to be more metacognitive by giving examples, by
cueing students through questioning, or providing prompts as part of the teaching
materials (Beyer, 1997).
Even though students may know learning strategies, they may not use them. This study is
important because it reports on the knowledge and use of metacognitive strategies by 16
students in a final-year high school biology class in New Zealand, within the limitations
of data collection. Cues and prompts for metacognition were used in a unit of work
designed to broaden students’ thinking about bioethical issues associated with cancer and
to enhance students’ use of metacognition.
The Learning Context
The unit of work was designed to address the achievement objective “investigate
contemporary biological issues and make informed judgements on any social, ethical, or
environmental implications” (Ministry of Education, 1994, p. 28). Students were required
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to write an essay of about 500 words as a draft for the national University Bursary
examination. The essay is worth 20% of the final eamination which is high stakes
assessment. Therefore it was very important for students to develop not only knowledge
of the causes, development and treatments of at least two types of cancer and an
understanding of the bioethical implications of these, but also to develop skills in
research and essay writing. Enquiry about issues requires students to articulate, question
and evaluate their personal views about the issues. These skills are precisely what we
expect students to develop when using metacognition for learning. Therefore this content
context was considered to be very suitable for developing metacognition.
The usual class teacher continued to teach the class during the intervention. Students
were required to use inquiry to investigate the biological, social and ethical aspects of
cancer, through the use of a range of classroom activities and independent research. A
constructivist approach was used that explored students’ prior content and procedural
knowledge and built on this through various activities so that students could reflect on
what they needed to know and what they needed to do. Cueing students to identify prior
knowledge and next steps for inquiry was used to scaffold knowledge of content, issues
clarification, issues analysis, and knowledge of learning processes.
The activities that “tapped into” students’ prior knowledge were a questionnaire, a group
brainstorm activity, group discussions and journal writing. Small group work, scenarios,
case studies and videos were used as stimulus activities for getting students to clarify and
analyse their values. These activities broadened students views about the social and
ethical issues (Author, 2000a). The focus here is on how cueing helped students in their
learning processes.
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The investigative skills and attitudes required of students are clearly outlined in the
curriculum document (Ministry of Education, 1994, pp. 37–47). Students were expected
to ask a series of related questions of themselves, their group and resource people, and
then to refine these questions. Students also were expected to identify and process
relevant information from a variety of sources and to evaluate the quality of information
gathered and its degree of relevance. The teacher demonstrated a technique that he called
“Trash and Treasure” to help students decide, based on their own questins, whether
content was worth writing down or not. The students planned their individual research,
chose the two types of cancer they wanted to investigate and derived key words and key
questions that would drive their work. These were prompted by the teacher through
questioning and cues in the form of checklists (Appendix 1) and bookmarks for aiding
journal writing that were developed for this intervention. The bookmarks had the
following prompts:
Something I Learned Today . . .
What does what I've found out today mean?
It seems important to note . . . . . .
I want to . . . . . .
A question I have is . . . . . .
I'm lost with . . . . . .
I disagree with . . . . . . because . . . . . .
What I need to do now is . . . . . .
I can't decide if . . . . . .
I'm stuck on . . . . . .
I wonder . . . . . .
What I need to do now is . . . . . .
I’m wondering why . . . . . .
One point of view is . . . . . .
How . . . . . .
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The students were encouraged to write questions into their journals as a guide for their
research or to use the prompts to record their thinking. The journals were collected at the
end of most sessions to give feedback on progress and “feed-forward” in the form of
questions the students might consider.
Students used a negotiated marking schedule to mark one another’s essays (Appendix 1).
This enabled the sharing of ideas on what content could be included and how text could
be structured. The teacher also marked the essays according to the same negotiated
marking schedule.
Research Methods
The research methodology employed for the study and described in the remainder of this
paper was based on an interpretative case study approach (Merriam, 1988). Sixteen
students from the same class were interviewed in a semi-structured manner, before (iv1)
and after the unit of work (iv2). Students’ journal entries (j) and essays (e) were also used
to augment the interview analysis for determining the use of learning strategies. To gauge
the extent to which the students’ accounts during the pre- and post-unit interviews
credibly portrayed their experiences, classroom observations (co) were conducted with
approximately three-quarters of the lessons as an attempt to satisfy Guba and Lincoln’s
(1989) credibility criterion for judging the quality of research.
Analysis
Awareness and/or use of a strategy was recorded if students reported it in their pre- or
post-unit interviews or if they showed that they had applied the strategy in their class
work, journals or essays. Recording the awareness and use of metacogntitive strategies
from multiple sources was used to triangulate the data sources.
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Since producing an essay was the intended product outcome of the unit of work, students
were grouped into the following categories according to the quality of their essays:
“Invisible Product”, “Satisfactory Product” and “Quality Product”. The essay was marked
out of a total of 40 marks (Appendix 1). Students in the “Invisible Product” category did
not hand in a final essay. The Satisfactory and Quality Product categories were further
subdivided into “Satisfactory Multiple” and “Quality Multiple” to indicate students who
had produced more than one essay. To gain a clearer understanding of how the students
used learning strategies, case studies were conducted for each of the 16 students in the
study group. Examples from the data sources are presented below to illustrate students’
levels of awareness and use of metacognitive strategies.
Students’ Awareness and Use of Metacognitive Strategies
Degrees of Awareness and Use
In Table 1, the students have been ranked according to their essay mark within each
group. These results show that students who produced quality essays used metacognitive
strategies more so than students who produced essays of lower quality. Although the
extent of use of these strategies was not quantified, analysis of the classroom
observations, interview comments and interpretations of the essay structure suggest that
the extent to which students used planning, monitoring and self-questioning was also
greater for those who produced the higher quality essays. Examples of how students
planned by writing lists or paragraph headings, decided about the logical order in which
to write the content, reflected on what they needed to find out or do, and used general
outlining of strategies are given below. As a group the “Quality Product” category also
showed a greater amount of reflective thinking when self-reporting and asked more
questions in their journals (Table 1).
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[Take in Table 1 about here]
Table 1 shows whether the 16 students were aware of and/or made use of metacognitive
strategies. Awareness is linked to knowing the strategies whereas control is linked to the
deliberate use of these (the awareness/use columns in the table).
The strategies targeted revealed whether students planned, monitored by checking on
progress, used information from peer-checking or set priorities, asked evaluative
questions and consciously made decisions about the learning process. Although selfquestioning can be both a planning and a monitoring strategy, it is highlighted in the table
as a separate category specifically to illustrate the number of questions written in the
student journals.
Examples of Degrees of Awareness
This section provides examples of how three students differed in their degrees of
awareness and use of strategies. These differences parallel the trends in the quality of the
essays.
Mitchel
Mitchel wrote an essay which was categorised as “satisfactory”. His level of awareness of
his learning processes was generalised. For example, in the pre-unit interview he stated
very broadly:
Mitchel (iv1): I have a plan on what I am going to use on an assignment.
He did not give specific details about how he could plan.
After completion of the unit he explained how he had discriminated between relevant and
irrelevant information and organised the information into sections.
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Mitchel (iv2): I did that, just, jotting down everything that is relevant and
working out what I needed and what I didn’t and putting it into
sections.
Researcher:
So you organised it into sections. How did you decide what
sections to have?
Mitchel :
Sort of what went with what, just depending. Like I did the
breast cancer with mammograms, and that comes into, sort of,
treatment and causes.
Researcher:
So how did you plan your essay, or did you plan it?
Mitchel :
I just wrote it.
So although Mitchel knew to plan according to sections, he did not actually do this which
is evidence of a lack of control of the planning process.
There was some evidence that Mitchel monitored his progress in his learning journal.
Mitchel (j):
Need more info on specific types of cancer, treatments, causes,
effects. Practice essay writing. Still having problems with
wording and making it flow.
Although he had identified practising writing as a useful strategy, it would only have
been helpful if he had also addressed getting more information and linking the ideas so
that they flowed. He also stated during class, after getting a draft back from the teacher,
that he needed to make stronger connections between his ideas.
Researcher : Will you change what you’ve written?
Mitchel (co): I’ll need to link my ideas more.
Although he was aware of the need to link ideas more, he did not know of ways to do this
or make his essay flow more coherently.
He considered the checklist for the essay provided by the teacher to be useful. Learning
organisational structures was an area that Mitchel had identified as “needing help with”.
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Mitchel (iv2): Once he [the teacher] put it up on the board . . . we went over
what had to be in there, and [then] I worked out what I didn’t
have in there, which helped.
This statement shows that he did consider whether there were gaps in his essay.
One characteristic where he differed from others in the “Satisfactory Product” category
was that he strategically sought feedback from the teacher. The classroom observation
notes indicate that he did this several times when writing his pre-write paragraph and
essay in class time. His seeking of feedback suggests that he recognised his need for
scaffolding to help him identify where he needed to make changes. He preferred to work
with others rather than independently, and he set up a buddy/study arrangement with
another student out of school time on his own accord. Getting feedback from someone
else was his way of external monitoring.
Charlie
Charlie wrote a “quality” essay. He knew from previous learning experiences that when
he planned he was more successful.
Charlie (iv2): [If] you can have a plan and do exactly what you have been
asked, you will definitely get high marks.
Among the students, Charlie probably had the most sophisticated awareness of the ways
he went about his learning and consciously thought about how he should proceed. For
example, he described how he planned his essay.
Charlie (iv2): I can show you. [He then proceeded to write on the
researcher’s pad paper.] Like, in my essay, this is just the way
it works out in my head; you have a flow chart, the opening,
and in that you introduce the question, and then you have main
point number one, and I think on my one it was about
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carcinogens. You talk about cancer, and then there are two
types of carcinogens, and I put, for example, the first type of
carcinogen, and then I talked about lung cancerthat was my
example . . . and then the other question was talking about the
social and ethical. I just stuffed them all [social and ethical
issues] in one paragraph, I think, and then a conclusion. So that
is why I don’t plan it [on paper]; I just remember it.
His statement also suggests that a part of his planning was to make connections between
what he thought was required in tasks with what he did. In other words he evaluated what
he needed to do. This is an example of when planning becomes related to monitoring.
Charlie commented about the discriminatory strategy called “Trash and Treasure” that
the teacher demonstrated for evaluating what notes to write.
Chris :
Trash and treasure because is shows that out of two pages, and
it may have been more, and out of that I only really found a
few lines that I really need.
Researcher:
So how was that useful?
Chris :
Because all that other stuff [information on the overhead
transparency] was just trash I thought, ‘cos I only really
needed to know three sentences and other people were writing
whole pages of notes, and I wrote three sentences and I think I
probably learnt just as much as them.
Researcher:
So did you use that technique when you were taking notes then
later on?
Chris :
Yes.
This last statement suggests he transferred the technique and applied it to his reading of
resource materials when gathering information for his essay. This was the intended
ourtcome of the teaching of “Trash and Treasure”.
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Charlie also asked himself many questions that motivated him to find out the answers.
Researcher : Just thinking about the whole thing to do with cancer and
ethics and social stuff, can you think of things that made you
ask yourself some questions about itthings that you haven’t
thought of before?
Charlie (iv2): Yes it did. I had so many questions about cancer. I found them
out as well. I found out about telemeres. I thought they were
really interesting, and I learnt one of my questions that I
wanted to know was, if plant cells get cancer as well, and I
found out that they do, that it doesn’t usually kill plants, and I
think insects can induce cancer in a plant. I thought that was
quite strange.
In his essay, Charlie linked the information that telemeres were like timekeepers in a cell
and that their formation limits a cell’s life span to the concept of immortality.
Charlie (e):
Biological conflicts arise in all facets of the disease. For
instance, some biologists believe that cancer is a natural aspect
of all animals [because telemeres form spontaneously] and that
finding a cure is futile. Other biologists believe that resourcing
cancer research could lead to the key to immortality. Cancer
could ironically be the key to immortality!
Of all the students, Charlie had the highest number of separate entries in his learning
journal (nine) (as evidenced from dates or slightly different writing styles), and he wrote
five questions in his journal. Charlie showed the most striking examples, compared with
other students, of integrating and extending his knowledge through self-questioning. He
not only considered the basic content but also questioned how the information he found
out applied to wider abstract biological ideas as indicated by his journal entries below.
Charlie (j):
I would like to know more about cancer in plant cells - do they
get cancer? If so, do they get it as frequently as in humans? Do
all carcinogens have the same sort of affect on plant cells as
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they do on humans? Doesn’t this cancer information go against
our natural selection theory? i.e. wouldn’t mutations become
cancerous and die?
These are very thoughtful and searching questions.
Charlie knew that using the strategies actually helped him. This knowledge was linked to
his success in tasks where he had consciously been aware of using them previously in
geography. For example he commented on the use of the Mnemonic G.E.E. G.E.E. which
stands for Generalisation, Explanation, Example as a way of structuring paragraphs.
Researcher:
How did you structure your essay?
Charlie:
Just that generalisation, explanation, example.
Researcher:
And you know that from?
Charlie :
Geography.
Other students (Samantha, Ann, Niome, Lois, Charlie, Liz and Marrianne) also reported
that previously they had learnd about how to structure paragraphs in essays from either
history or geography.
Charlie reflected on how he could improve his essay through practice and how he would
making greater use of the essay marking schedule.
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Researcher:
If you did this whole unit and you knew you had to write an
essay again, what would you do differently?
Charlie:
I think I would have a look at a lot more essays that other
people wrote, especially model essays and I would do a lot
more practice, a lot more draft work and I would try to get a
perfect essay, I think that had no faults.
Researcher:
How would you do that?
Charlie:
By a lot of practice.
Researcher:
What would you do to the essay to get it to be perfect?
Charlie:
You just get the marking schedules and you check it over
exactly what you have missed out and then include it.
The focus of his planning and monitoring was to maximise the efficiency of his time. He
always worked consistently well in class, and separated himself from others when he
wanted to work independently.
Charlie (iv1): Usually I find if I cannot understand something, I will try and
find it out by myself because if someone tells me I do not think
I will really understand so I try and really research it and try
and understand.
This was another example of how he applied his awareness, knowledge and use of
learning strategies effectively.
Liz
Liz was a relatively able student who was accustomed to success. She contributed well
during class discussions due to her confidence and outgoing personality. She was
prepared to take risks by asking questions of the teacher and her peers, to increase her
understanding. Despite her tendency to distract other students sitting next to her by
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making comments, laughing or idle chatter, her awareness and control of her own
learning were relatively high compared with other students in the class.
For example she was aware that she needed help in structuring essays and that this was
what made essay writing difficult for her.
Liz (iv2):
I am not good at writing essays but I’ve got better as I have
had to write essays in the last few weeks. [Previously] I have
just written, not with any formula. I need help with the formula
[structure] of essays. And I have to unpack the question, which
I find hard usually unless I’m told exactly what to unpack.
Her final marks for essay structure (essay 1:10/10 and essay 2: 7/10) indicate that she had
developed these skills by the time she had written her essays.
Although Liz considered that the learning journal was not useful, she wrote more
questions in her journal than any other student (Table 1). She also answered some of her
own questions in her journal and clarified some questions with the teacher. For example,
some of the questions she asked were:
Liz (j):
Can you get cancer anywhere, or just anywhere you have fat or
muscle or blood?
Then an answer to this question appeared in one of her essays.
Liz (e):
Because cells are everywhere in the body, cancers can form
anywhere.
This implies that prior to her inquiry, she was not aware that cancer formed in any type of
cell, but was aware of this when she wrote her essay.
Another example was the sequence of questions about treatments in her journal.
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Liz (j):
What methods do people seem to prefer to use when they’ve
found out they have cancer? Treatment, chemical, radiation,
positive thinking, god, nature, surgery?
In her essay she mentioned gene therapy, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, surgery and
genetic screening for hereditary types of cancer.
She checked her essays to make sure the content was relevant to the essay question.
Liz (iv2):
I just read it and picked out bits that went for one of the
headings of the questions. You know, what your essay lacked
and what to put in next time. I didn’t have time to do more
than one essay, but I had lots of other things to do at this time
of the year. It might’ve been better at a different time of year.
Liz produced her second essay after this comment, perhaps after realising that there might
be a benefit in writing more than one essay.
When asked what she would do differently if she was able to repeat this unit of work she
replied:
Liz (iv2):
I’d get everything done a lot quicker.
Researcher:
What do you think we could do to help with that?
Liz:
I’ve got to organise my time better. If it [the essay] was part of
internal assessment, it would be more motivating [there would
be more incentive to complete it].
In this last comment, Liz was referring to the fact that she spent a lot of time in class
talking and not being “on task”. She was also inferring that had the essay been part of the
internal assessment component of the course, the external motivation for finishing the
essay would have been more immediate. As it was, students finished school in mid
November, sat the national external examination in late November and did not get their
grades back until January.
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Using reflective and critical thinking processes to make decisions about what to include
in her essay helped her greatly. For example, during researching and note making she was
aware that discriminating information and choosing what notes were appropriate, was
important.
Liz (iv2):
I was kind of already aware of that [the “Trash and Treasure”
technique] Sometimes I blindly copy. Sometimes it’s better
when people dictate notes but when you have them on an
overhead, you tend to copy everything. He’s told us during the
year not to write down everything, and gives us a choice.
This comment was confirmation of the teacher’s instruction for students to choose what
they should write down for their notes.
As noted (Table 1), Liz asked more questions than any other student in her journal, used
the questions to help her research information and incorporated some of the ideas from
them into her essay. She actively and intentionally sought information. The way she used
monitoring strategies allowed her to identify what information she needed and what
strategies she needed to improve her essay structure and its impact. This resulted in her
obtaining good marks for the structur of her essays.
Use of Metacognition
The students in this study were in their final year of high school and therefore they all
used metacognition to some extent. However, the level of awareness of their thinking and
strategies for learning varied considerably. The teacher had identified the need for
scaffolding to help them consider what choices they had for approaching their learning.
Therefore he modelled ways to discrimiate useful and unuseful information (“Trash and
Treasure” technique), plan and check work. He also prompted students to ask themselves
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questions about what they needed to know or do. Written cues and prompts were given as
a checklist for planning, researching and writing essays and journal bookmarks contained
prompt statements. Certainly, for those students who used them, the checklists and
prompter bookmarks helped to instigate self-questioning. Some students also made use of
mnemonics to evaluate the structure of paragraphs.
Two students in the “Invisible Product” category did not use their journals at all. Other
students only tended to write in them when they were reminded and when given time at
the end of the lesson to do so. Despite this, many students used their journals to write
plans, select information to support their ideas, apply personal organisation, consider
alternatives and elaborate on ideas. The students who wrote more questions in their
journals achieved higher marks in their essays. This is not implying causality, but
indicates a definite trend here.
The data presented here indicate that metacognitive strategies were employed
differentially by the students (Table 1). Although most students could articulate what
might be done for more effective learning, some were not sufficiently motivated to use
these strategies. This may have been because they had not experienced the benefit of
using them previously. It may also be linked to a view that learning is about finding the
“right” answers or not knowing that they had a choice in how they tackled tasks. The
tentative response by some students is not surprising since, for some of them, it was the
first time they had experienced strategies for monitoring their learning in this way. This
applied particularly to the use of the learning journals. Loughran and Derry (1997) also
observed resistance to self-evaluation or monitoring in a group of year 9 science students
because it was unfamiliar to them. In this intervention beliefs about what learning
involves needed to be challenged more.To allow more students to take more
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responsibility for learning decisions, attention could have be given to explicitly
discussing what was expected.
Mitchel considered that because his prior knowledge was low at the beginning of the unit,
any help he had gained benefited his essay writing. Mitchel had realised that he needed
help with structuring his work. Due to his lack of confidence in this area, he chose to seek
help from others to monitor his work. In contrast, Liz and Charlie were more self-directed
and asked themselves questions to direct their work as shown by some of the extracts
from their journals.
Those students who had a more in-depth awareness of their learning strengths and
weaknesses were more likely to develop and use strategies for addressing their
weaknesses. For example Mitchel described his learning strategies in broad terms
whereas Charlie could describe details of how he used strategies.
All students probably need guidance in identifying what they need to know. If students
lack knowledge of their own learning or lack an understanding of how they come to
know, they can hardly be expected to be reflective in terms of utilising this knowledge to
their own advantage by choosing or developing learning strategies (National Research
Council, 1999).
Even though students may be aware of what they can do for more effective learning, such
as using metacognition, they may not be motivated or willing to expend the extra effort
required. There is some evidence that use of strategies is associated with a belief in the
value of the task and students’ belief in their own ability (Stipeck & Weisz, 1981;
Thomas, 1999; Thomas & McRobbie, 2001). Previous success with using the strategies is
likely to influence their perceptions of the fruitfulness of using them (Siegler, 1990). This
could explain the differences in use of metacognitive strategies in Table 1. Students in the
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lower half of the table had all experienced using mnemonics or a formalised way of
reviewing paragraph writing previously. They were therefore able to recall these
experiences when questioned by the teacher and thereby reflect on the usefullness of
applying mnemonics.
Conclusion
This study has shown that the students who used metacognitive strategies to plan and
monitor their work produced essays of higher quality. There is a trend that indicates that
those students who used a greater degree of self-questioning in their learning journals,
achieved higher essay marks. Most students had some level of awareness of their own
learning but the difference between lower achievers and higher achievers in terms of their
essay marks, tended to be in the degree of awareness. Lower achievers could describe
their learning in broad general terms whereas higher achievers could explain how they
carried out strategies in detail. There was also some evidence to suggest that students
need to be reminded to access prior knowledge and this was done through teacher
questioning, a bookmark containing prompts for use with the learning journal and a
checklist for the essay. There is wide scope for investigating other ways to scaffold
students’ awareness of their own learning so they can access and develop metacognitive
strategies.
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Table 1: Students’ knowledge and use of metacognitive strategies
Group
Student
Planning
Monitoring
Selfquestioning
Awareness
Use
Awareness
Daniel

Invisible
Tulane

Product
Sally

Mary


Kay


Mitchel

Satisfactory
Vincy

Product
Awar

Samantha

Ann
Quality
Product
Use
Awareness
No.
questions
in
journ
al
0

0

3

4


2



2



3



2




4





3
Niome





10
Lois





5
Charlie





5
Quality
Terri





4
Multiple
Liz





14
Marianne





5
Satisfactory





Multiple
26
Appendix 1 Cancer Essay Guide and Marking Schedule
(This marking schedule was negotiated by the teacher with the students and used for peer
marking, teacher marking and assessment by the researcher)
1994 University Bursary question:
Discuss why the incidence and control of cancer is a current issue. Include comments on
the biological, social and ethical issues involved.
Student:
Marks allocated
Why is it a contemporary ?
Why is it an issue?
Biological aspects
Social aspects
Ethical aspects
Mark for your essay
2
2
4
3
3
Examples of cancer
Causes
Effects
Treatments
Ability to write an essay
Logical
Clear
Appropriate terms
Spelling
Script readable
Paragraphs
All parts addressed
Overall impact
Comments:
4 for each eg
2 for each eg.
2 for each eg.
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
27