Metacognitive Awareness in Teaching and Teaching Competency: A Survey on Student Teachers at Secondary Level

Abstract

Metacognition has now been emerged as an important part of teacher preparation programs. The term metacognition was introduced by psychologists to refer to knowledge about and control over thinking and learning activities.(Flavell, 1976). Metacognition involves at least two components (1) an awareness of the skills, strategies and resources needed to perform a task effectively-knowing what to do and (2) the ability to use self-regulatory mechanisms to ensure the successful completion of the task-knowing how and when to do the what. The strategies in the first component "knowing what to do" include identifying the main idea, rehearsing information forming association and images using mnemonics, organizing new material to make it easier to remember, applying test taking techniques, out lining and note taking. The regulatory mechanisms-the second component, knowing how and when-include checking to see if you understand, predicting outcomes, evaluating the effectiveness of an attempt at a task, planning the next move, testing strategies, deciding how to apportion time and revising or switching to other strategies to overcome any difficulties encountered (Baker,1994 & Brown, 1978). The use of these regulatory mechanisms is known as cognitive monitoring (Flavell, 1985). Several researches offer evidence that metacognition is teachable (Cross& Paris,1988; Dignath et al.,2008). Metacognitive skills and beliefs about learning have consequences for student"s learning and performance. Teaching metacognition-introducing these new skills and beliefs and giving students practice at applying them-improves student"s learning (Lovett, 2008). Metacognition is a special type of knowledge and ability that develops with personal experience and with schooling. It is a recursive loop with cognitive development in that it produces and is a product of cognitive development (Paris and Winograd, 1990). Metacognition plays an important role in communication, reading comprehension, language acquisition, problem solving and personality development (Flavell, 1979). Teacher competencies are outcome-based method for assessing teacher performance. They define key characteristics of successful teachers without prescribing any specific curriculum or instructional practices. Teaching competency refers to "the right way of conveying units of knowledge, application and skills to students." The right way here includes knowledge of content, processes, methods and means of conveying content. Competent teachers would also create classroom conditions and climate which are conducive for student learning. Teachers having good metacognitive teaching competency can help their students to develop metacognitive ability in them. Teacher education is going through an unprecedented period of change. Across the world, the number and quality of teachers are becoming a key policy concern. This phenomenon affects the richer industrialized nations and those in the process of developing stronger economic infrastructure. Ensuring adequate supply of higher quality teachers is therefore a challenge, as is the expanding task of providing coherent, career-long, professional development, opportunity for teachers. As knowledge increases and technologies emerge, so the status of teachers has to adapt. The scale of demand for teacher education is large. In this context, it is clear that the institutions of teacher education created in the twentieth century will be unable to meet the demands of the twenty first. Any educational effort loses its vitality if it does not give adequate attention and importance to the teachers, one of the most important pillars of education. In this context the investigator made an attempt to find the existing level of Metacognitive Awareness in Teaching and Metacognitive Teaching Competency of student teachers at secondary level and also to find out whether there exists any relationship between the two variables. I. Objectives 1. To compare the level of Metacognitive Awareness in Teaching among student teachers at secondary level based on (a) Type of Management of the Institution (Government-Aided/ Unaided) (b) Locale of Institution(Rural/ Urban) (c) Educational Qualification(Graduate/ Post Graduate) (d) Subject of Study (Science/Language) 2. To compare the level of Metacognitive Teaching Competency among student teachers at secondary level based on (a) Type of Management of the Institution(Government-Aided/ Unaided)