Preliminary Investigation of Relations between Young Students' Self-Regulatory Strategies and Their Metacognitive Experiences

Abstract

The present study investigated second-graders' self-regulative behav ior during task engagement and its relations to performance and to students' on-line metacognitive experiences. Participants were 25 individually examined Greek second graders (13 boys and 12 girls; M age: 7.6 yr., SD = 0.2). Students' use of cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational regulatory strategies while performing a cognitive task were directly observed and recorded by two independent observers. Students' task-specific performance was also evaluated. Finally, students' feeling of satisfaction with the solution produced, their estimate of effort expenditure, and estimate of the solution's correctness were assessed. Analysis showed these second grade students' use of self-regulatory strategies and feeling of satisfaction were significantly associated with their performance. However, metacognitive experiences reported after the solution were only slightly related to the students' actual self-regulative behavior during the task, implying that the relations of students' regulatory efforts with their metacognitive processes are still developing at such a young age.