Fostering learners adaptive competence: Does acquisition of self-regulation and metacognition differentiate between students?

Abstract

This study examined whether or not heuristics skills such as self-regulated and metacognitive strategies differentiate significantly between high ability students. Using an experiment with purposive sample size of estimated two hundred and forty high ability students, an independent t-test conducted at alpha 0.01 suggested a high statistical difference between the experimental and control groups performed at [t=2.91, p=0.01]. This was suggestive that the control group without the self-regulated and metacognitive intervention strategies performed much lower than the experimental groups. These results were interpreted that it was the acquisition of these skills that was the predicting cause of this enhanced performance of the experimental group as opposed to the control. Self-regulated and metacognitive skills significantly fostered this adaptive competence of learners exposed to these strategies more than those who were not.