Incidence of the use of metacognitive thinking skills in problem solving: Case of mechanical physics students for engineering

Abstract

The development of metacognitive thinking skills in students is a fundamental element for their good academic performance, according to research in recent decades. The research objective was to identify the use that the students of the first semesters of higher education of a higher education institution in Bogotá, Colombia, make of the regulation skills of metacognitive thinking, during the solution of problems in mechanical physics, and the possible incidence directly or indirectly in this solution process, without having previously been instructed or immersed in explicit methodologies for teaching such skills, through the application of a modified set of problem situations, as a data collection instrument. A coding system is also designed in order to translate the data and perform quantitative analysis. The results indicate that a high percentage of participating students fail to make effective use of this type of metacognitive thinking skills. However, the direct impact of its use on proper problem solving does arise in a significant way.