Do Implicit Theories About Ability Predict Self-Reports and Behavior-Proximal Measures of Primary School Students' In-Class Cognitive and Metacognitive Learning Strategy Use?

Benjamin Matthes,Heidrun Stoeger

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.690271

Abstract

Although studies show relations between implicit theories about ability (ITs) and cognitive as well as metacognitive learning strategy use, existing studies suffer from an overreliance on broad-brush self-report measures of strategy use and limited ecological validity. Moreover, studies rarely examine younger students, and research on ITs and how much students benefit from interventions on learning strategies is lacking. Therefore, we investigated in ecologically valid settings (regular classroom instruction) whether primary school students’ ITs are related to their use of cognitive strategies (text reduction strategies based on identifying a text’s main ideas) and metacognitive strategies, assessed with (a) typical self-report scales and (b) more behavior-proximal measures. We also investigated whether students’ ITs predict how much they benefit from a previously evaluated 4-week intervention on cognitive and metacognitive strategies during regular classroom instruction (i.e., how much self-report scales and behavior-proximal measures for strategy use increase over the course of the intervention). Participants were 436 German primary school students (third and fourth graders). The data were analyzed using mixed linear regression analyses. Strength of students’ incremental theory was positively related to metacognitive strategy use, but not cognitive strategy use, when measured with self-report scales. For behavior-proximal measures, strength of incremental theory was positively related to the effectiveness of students’ cognitive strategy use and their extent of strategy monitoring (one of the two metacognitive strategies examined), but not to the quality of their goal setting (the second metacognitive strategy). Unexpectedly, students with a stronger incremental theory did not benefit more from the intervention.

Highlights

While some learners believe that their abilities can be greatly increased through practice, others believe that their abilities have a large static part that cannot be changed
Because we investigated primary school students, we focused on cognitive strategies in the service of text reduction and the identification of a text’s main ideas, which are essential for reading comprehension (Gajria and Jitendra, 2016) and important from primary school on (Williams, 1988)
Predicting Growth Rates for Learning Strategy Use To address the second aim of our study, we investigated whether implicit theories about ability (ITs) predict the extent to which students benefit from the intervention, that is, whether ITs predict rates of growth for the measures of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use

Summary

Introduction

While some learners believe that their abilities can be greatly increased through practice, others believe that their abilities have a large static part that cannot be changed. Existing studies on ITs and the use of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies exhibit several weaknesses They typically rely on broad-brush self-report measures. That is, these studies use items that ask learners about the extent to which they use particular strategies for learning in general or for a given subject or class, thereby requiring learners to generalize over a variety of learning episodes and contexts (e.g., Martin et al, 2013; Mega et al, 2014). These studies use items that ask learners about the extent to which they use particular strategies for learning in general or for a given subject or class, thereby requiring learners to generalize over a variety of learning episodes and contexts (e.g., Martin et al, 2013; Mega et al, 2014) This can be problematic due to the validity issues of such measures (see Schellings and van Hout-Wolters, 2011; Veenman, 2011a,b)

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