Self-reports on students' learning processes are academic metacognitive knowledge

Abstract

The current study postulates that students' self-reported perceptions on their academic processes are a type of metacognition: academic metacognitive knowledge (AMcK). We investigated, using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), three hypotheses: (a) AMcK explains the variance of factor scores of students' learning approaches (SLA) and academic motivation (AM); (b) AMcK is distinct from working metacognition (WMC); and (c) AMcK has incremental validity, beyond WMC, on the explanation of general academic achievement (GAA) variance. Two tests (indicators of WMC) and two scales (indicators of AMcK) were administered to 684 ten-to-eighteen-year-old Brazilian children and adolescents. Annual grades in Math, Portuguese, Geography and History were used as indicators of GAA. The results show that none of the three hypotheses can be refuted.