Analysis of metacognitive skills and Van Hiele levels of geometric thinking through various variables

Abstract

One of the skills students require in order to cope with problems is meta-cognitive skills. Meta-cognitive skills can be regarded as thought skills that play an active role not only in the academic sense but also in the determination of the route to be followed in daily life. Metacognition is defined as knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena and monitoring of one’s own memory, comprehension, and other cognitive processes and claimed that meta-cognitive skills are the most important factors in explaining success in problem-solving. Meta-cognitive skills include self-monitor of learning, being aware of learning process, planning and choosing strategies, monitoring learning process, correcting mistakes, controlling whether strategies work or not and change learning methods/strategies if necessary. One of the thinking methods used in geometry field is Van Hiele Geometric Thinking model. This model which presents, apart from geometric thinking, how an individual perceives geometry was developed in accordance with plane geometry however it was applied to three-dimensional objects later on. The aim of this study is to analyze meta-cognitive skills and Van Hiele levels of geometric thinking in the sense of various variables. 175 high-schools and university students were included in the scope of study for this aim. The first result obtained from study is that meta-cognitive skills of high-school students differ according to class level. On the other hand, meta-cognitive skills differ significantly according to Van Hiele levels of geometric thinking. Moreover, this difference can be observed nearly at all levels. When high-school and university students are considered together, it was concluded that meta-cognitive skills and Van Hiele levels of geometric thinking show significant differences according to education level.