Identification of preservice biology teachers' metacognitive awareness and metacognitive skills

Abstract

Metacognition can make a significant contribution to learning, especially that related to intellectual ability. Students' metacognitive awareness and skills can be developed through consistent implementation of appropriate learning designs and students' progress monitoring. The current research attempted to identify students' metacognitive awareness and metacognitive skills in a biology education context. This research involved 142 preservice biology teachers from STKIP Pembangunan Indonesia Makassar, UIN Alauddin Makassar, Universitas Pejuang Republik Indonesia (UPRI) Makassar, and STKIP Yapim Maros. This study employed a descriptive quantitative method where metacognitive awareness inventory (MAI) was distributed to gather data on the participants' metacognitive awareness and an essay test was conducted to examine the students' metacognitive skills. The results show that the students' metacognitive awareness falls into very low category with the average score of 37,55 for planning, 37,97 for monitoring, 38,39 for evaluating, and 35,73 for revising. Based on the test results, almost half of the students (44,90%) are categorized can not really; none of them (0%) were super or ok; 13,63% of the students fall into development category; 39,49% into risk category; and 1,97% into not yet category.