Metacognitive Self-Confidence in School-Aged Children
Prior research within the area of metacognition indicates that a self-confidence construct exists among both adults and primary school children aged 9–12. In this chapter, we review findings from several recent studies that demonstrate good predictive val
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Metacognitive Self-Confidence in School-Aged Children Sabina Kleitman, Lazar Stankov, Carl Martin Allwood, Sarah Young, and Karina Kar Lee Mak
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Introduction
This chapter focuses on the self-confidence construct that belongs to a broader area of metacognition. Metacognition refers to ‘knowing about knowing’ (Metcalfe and Shimamura 1994). An aspect of the second ‘knowing’ refers to one’s understanding of different task-related factors, such as the state of one’s knowledge and abilities. The first ‘knowing’ represents the awareness of this understanding. Most theories distinguish between two major components of metacognition— knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition (Nelson and Narens 1994; Schraw and Dennison 1994). Knowledge of cognition consists of different sets of beliefs one holds about oneself. They include (but are not limited to) beliefs about how effective one is as a learner and factors that influence one’s own performance. This information may assist a person in the successful planning of his or her learning. For instance, if the learners are aware that they excel in understanding the logic behind rules but struggle with simple memorisation of the material, to optimise their performance, they should focus on acquiring understanding of the principles of the
S. Kleitman (*) • S. Young • K.K.L. Mak School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] L. Stankov National Institute of Education, Jurong West, Singapore Centre for positive Psychology and Education, School of Education, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] C.M. Allwood Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]
M. Mo Ching Mok (ed.), Self-directed Learning Oriented Assessments in the Asia-Pacific, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 18, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4507-0_8, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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studied phenomenon rather than trying to memorise the outcomes of it. Reflections on who one is as a learner may also assist in realising what aspirations, expectations and evaluations to hold with respect to one’s own performance. In this chapter, we tap into the processes of metacognitive knowledge by assessing the metacognitive beliefs of children. In particular, we focus on children’s perception of competency in their fundamental cognitive abilities of memory and reasoning. We also assess children’s academic self-efficacy beliefs. Another focus of this chapter is the metacognitive experience of the feeling of confidence, which is a part of a broader domain of regulation of cognition—that is, self-monitoring of cognition (Efklides 2001, 2006; Schraw and Moshman 1995). Self-monitoring is defined as the ability to watch, check and appraise the quality of one’s own cognitive work in the course of doing it (Schraw and Moshman 1995). Confidence judgments reflect t
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