Journal article
Stephanie M. Halmo, Kira A. Yamini, Julie Dangremond Stanton
bioRxiv, 2023
bioRxiv, 2023
Semantic Scholar
DOI
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APA
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Halmo, S. M., Yamini, K. A., & Stanton, J. D. (2023). Metacognition and Problem Solving: How Self-Coaching Helps First-Year Students Move Past the Discomfort of Monitoring. BioRxiv.
Chicago/Turabian
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Halmo, Stephanie M., Kira A. Yamini, and Julie Dangremond Stanton. “Metacognition and Problem Solving: How Self-Coaching Helps First-Year Students Move Past the Discomfort of Monitoring.” bioRxiv (2023).
MLA
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Halmo, Stephanie M., et al. “Metacognition and Problem Solving: How Self-Coaching Helps First-Year Students Move Past the Discomfort of Monitoring.” BioRxiv, 2023.
BibTeX Click to copy
@article{stephanie2023a,
title = {Metacognition and Problem Solving: How Self-Coaching Helps First-Year Students Move Past the Discomfort of Monitoring},
year = {2023},
journal = {bioRxiv},
author = {Halmo, Stephanie M. and Yamini, Kira A. and Stanton, Julie Dangremond}
}
Abstract
Stronger metacognitive regulation skills are linked to increased academic achievement. Metacognition has primarily been studied using retrospective methods, but these methods limit access to students’ in-the-moment metacognition. We investigated first-year life science students’ in-the-moment metacognition while they solved challenging problems, and asked 1) What metacognitive regulation skills are evident when first-year life science students solve problems on their own? and 2) What aspects of learning self-efficacy do first-year life science students reveal when they solve problems on their own? Think aloud interviews were conducted with 52 first-year life science students across three institutions and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Our results reveal that first-year life science students use an array of monitoring and evaluating skills while solving problems, which challenges the deficit-oriented notion that students enter college with poor metacognitive skills. Additionally, a handful of students self-coached or encouraged themselves as they confronted aspects of the problems that were unfamiliar. These verbalizations suggest ways we can encourage students to couple their metacognitive regulation skills and self-efficacy to persist when faced with challenging disciplinary problems. Based on our findings, we offer recommendations for how instructors can help first-year life science students develop and strengthen their metacognition to achieve improved problem-solving performance.
