Abstract
A child's metacognitive skills contribute significantly to their learning and success. However, very few studies are focused on these skills at early education and most of them are carried out from inappropriate methodological perspectives for the characteristics of the youngest students. To overcome such limitations, it is essential to carry out observational studies that analyze children's metacognitive behaviors in the natural and habitual context of children's learning, as well as appropriate tasks for their level of development. The aim of this study was to analyze the sequential and associative structure of the metacognitive skills used by 5-year-old children throughout the resolution of a playful task (a puzzle). It was interesting to know if there were different hidden structures in the use of metacognitive skills in the children who solved the puzzle and those who did not. From the methodological approach, this work was located in the perspective of mixed methods which is characterized by the integration of qualitative and quantitative elements. This integration was carried out from the “connect” option. The integration involved developing quantitizing, as one of its possibilities. Recent scientific literature has considered systematic observation, in which the QUAL-QUAN-QUAL macro stages take place, as a mixed method itself. Consequently, systematic observation was applied, because it was suitable for our aim. A Nomothetic/Punctual/Multidimensional observational design was used. The playful activity of 44 preschool children solving the puzzle individually was coded. It allowed us to obtain data matrices that respond to the QUAL stage. Regarding the QUAN stage, once the quality of data was controlled, the records were further analyzed by differentiating two groups of participants (those who had solved the puzzle and those who did not) using three quantitative techniques of observational analysis (T-pattern detection, lag sequential analysis, polar coordinate analysis). Finally data was returned to a QUAL stage to interpret the results. The use of these three techniques allowed a detailed and in-depth analysis of the children's activity. Results reveal differences in the metacognitive abilities of the children that solved and didn't solve the puzzle. These results have important implications for educational practice.
Highlights
Metacognitive skills refer to the processes that allow us to guide, regulate and supervise our own learning activities; that is, knowing how to learn and how and when to use a series of strategies to regulate our behavior
In order to overcome the limitations previously mentioned, the aim of this study is to analyze, complementing three observational data analysis techniques (T-pattern detection, lag sequential analysis and polar coordinate analysis), children records obtained to know the sequential and associative structure of the metacognitive skills that children of 5 years of age put into action during the resolution of a playful task
The observational design employed, according to the observational designs described by Anguera et al (2018a), was Nomothetic/Punctual/Multidimensional (N/P/M), which was justified by the following arguments: nomothetic in regard to units of observation studied because we studied the metacognitive skills of 44 children playing individually; punctual regarding the temporality of the assesment given that each participant was observed in a single session analyzing behavior succession, indicating their metacognitive skills within the session, and multidimensional in relation to the dimensionality of observed behavior because several metacognitive skills were analyzed according to the theoretical model proposed by several authors and the observation instrument reflected this multidimensional structure
Summary
Metacognitive skills ( called metacognitive regulation) refer to the processes that allow us to guide, regulate and supervise our own learning activities; that is, knowing how to learn and how and when to use a series of strategies to regulate our behavior. Metacognitive skills play an important role in a wide variety of activities including the exchange of verbal information, comprehension, reading, writing, attention, memory, problem solving, learning, or self-control This helps to understand that metacognitive skills have been identified as a good predictor of academic success, even better than intelligence itself (Bryce et al, 2015; Nelson and Marulis, 2017; Mari and Saka, 2018). Students who strategically use their metacognitive skills learn more and with less effort than those who do not use them; they detect and solve problems more and discover the best methods to reinforce what they have learned and transfer it to other contexts This makes them more involved and motivated toward learning, in addition to presenting greater self-efficacy (Chatzipanteli et al, 2014; Mari and Saka, 2018)
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