Metacognition and student attitudes toward self-efficacy, ability beliefs, and learning targets

Abstract

Metacognition is a key component of effective learning, yet the explicit instruction of metacognitive routines, strategies, and habits can be difficult to negotiate and incorporate into daily instruction. Donovan, Bransford, and the National Research Council's paper How Students Learn (2005) shows that development of self-regulatory practices, such as metacognition, improves students' self-efficacy, beliefs regarding the malleable nature of ability, and attitudes towards academic subjects. This action research project examined how the metacognitive self-regulatory routine of using daily learning targets to focus students' efforts and self-monitor affect students' perceptions of ability (entity vs. incremental), self-efficacy in Spanish language learning, and attitudes towards the process of using daily and chapter learning targets to self-assess. The hypothesis that the use of daily learning targets as a measure of self-assessed proficiency and progress in the high school Spanish III classroom will enhance students' perceptions of self-efficacy in Spanish language learning, their concepts of ability, and their attitudes towards daily learning targets was tested using the students in my three sections of my Spanish III courses at the high school level throughout first semester of the 2014-2015 school year. Students' attitudes and changes in attitudes were measured and monitored via a questionnaire using a 5-response item Likert scale that was administered at the beginning and at the end of the school semester. The data collected via the questionnaire was also examined in relation to students' actual performance as measured by letter grade for the semester.