Metacognition and Problem Solving: How Self-Coaching Helps First-Year Students Move Past the Discomfort of Monitoring

Abstract

Stronger metacognitive regulation skills are linked to increased academic achievement. 26 Metacognition has primarily been studied using retrospective methods, but these methods limit 27 access to students’ in-the-moment metacognition. We investigated first-year life science 28 students’ in-the-moment metacognition while they solved challenging problems, and asked 1) 29 What metacognitive regulation skills are evident when first-year life science students solve 30 problems on their own? and 2) What aspects of learning self-efficacy do first-year life science 31 students reveal when they solve problems on their own? Think aloud interviews were conducted 32 with 52 first-year life science students across three institutions and analyzed using qualitative 33 content analysis. Our results reveal that first-year life science students use an array of 34 monitoring and evaluating skills while solving problems, which challenges the deficit-oriented 35 notion that students enter college with poor metacognitive skills. Additionally, a handful of 36 students self-coached or encouraged themselves as they confronted aspects of the problems 37 that were unfamiliar. These verbalizations suggest ways we can encourage students to couple 38 their metacognitive regulation skills and self-efficacy to persist when faced with challenging 39 disciplinary problems. Based on our findings, we offer recommendations for how instructors can 40 help first-year life science students develop and strengthen their metacognition to achieve 41 improved problem-solving performance.