Abstract
In recent years, there has been considerable growth in evidence that open-ended, challenging, and autobiographical tasks may provide better opportunities to evidence how young children exhibit metacognition and self-regulation. This research examines possible differences in children’s metacognition and self-regulation between two ecological valid tasks. Data from 32 in-depth interview sessions with 16 first-grade children were analyzed: two sessions for each child (i.e., one session for a graphic production task and one session for the corresponding deferred revision task). We analyzed indicators of metacognitive knowledge (i.e., knowledge of persons, tasks, and strategies), metacognitive regulation (i.e., planning, monitoring, control, and evaluation), and emotional and motivational regulation (i.e., emotional and motivational monitoring and emotional and motivational control) using Cambridgeshire Independent Learning (C.Ind.Le) Coding Framework (Whitebread et al. Metacognition and Learning, 4, 63–85, 2009). Overall, children were significantly more likely to display metacognitive knowledge in the production task, whereas in the deferred revision task, they were more likely to display metacognitive regulation. Specifically, children were more likely to show knowledge of strategies during the production task, whereas in the deferred revision task, they were more likely to display monitoring, evaluation, and emotional and motivational control. Both open-ended, challenging, and autobiographical tasks are suggested as valuable tools when combined with one another, offering complementary insights and helping make children’s metacognition and self-regulation more visible to themselves, educators, and researchers.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
We are indebted to the school staff, families, and children who welcomed us into their classrooms to share several weeks in their lives. We also thank Nora Scheuer, Bárbara M. Brizuela, and Flavia Santamaria for their valuable guidance with the research design.
Funding
This work was supported in part by Agencia Nacional de Promoción de la Investigación, el Desarrollo Tecnológico y la Innovación (PICT 2017–0627), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (PUE22920180100046), and Universidad Nacional del Comahue (04/B-252).
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Current themes of research:
Ana Clara Ventura studies authentic educational and familial practices that support children’s literacy and math development. She currently studies metacognitive and self-regulatory development in early childhood in writing and number domains.
Mariano Lazzeri studies metacognitive and self-regulatory processes at the beginning of schooling from a children-centered perspective.
Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:
Ventura, A.C. (2022). Metacognition and self-regulation in young children: does it matter if metacognitive experiences are communicated? Early Years, https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2022.2065666
Ventura, A.C., Santamaria, F., & Scheuer, N. (2022). Young children's metacognitive processes in a variety of challenging number tasks. In A. Sharif-Rasslan & D. Hassidov (Eds.), Special Issues in Early Childhood Mathematics Education Research. (pp. 40–72) Brill Publisher. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004510685_003
Ventura, A.C., Brizuela, B., M., Blanton, M., Sawrey, K., Murphy Gardiner, A., & Newman-Owen, A. (2021). A learning trajectory in Kindergarten and first grade students’ thinking of variable and use of variable notation to represent indeterminate quantities. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 62, 100,866. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2021.100866
Ventura, A.C., Scheuer, N., & Pozo, J. I. (2020). Elementary school children's conceptions of teaching and learning to write as intentional activities. Learning and Instruction, 65, 101,249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2019.101249
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Ventura, A.C., Lazzeri, M.C. Are there differences between first-grade children’s display of metacognition and self-regulation when engaged in a graphic production task and when later revising it? The complementary roles of production and revision at the beginning of schooling. Eur J Psychol Educ 38, 1425–1442 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-022-00672-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-022-00672-3