The relationship between students' metacognitive awareness and their solutions to similar types of mathematical problems

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between the metacognitive awareness of university students and their solutions to the similar mathematical problem types. Participants were 97 freshmen from department of mathematics at a state university in Turkey. Two different scales were used for data collection: "Metacognitive Awareness Inventory" and "Mathematical Problem Types Test". The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the students' metacognitive awareness levels and their problem solving levels regarding routine and non-routine problems. There was no significant linear correlation between university students' metacognitive awareness levels and their problem solving levels for "separation", "combining", and "multiplication" in routine problems. Multiple regression analysis was used to test if the metacognitive awareness significantly predicted participants' levels of problem solving. The results of the regression indicated that metacognitive awareness significantly predicted problem solving levels and both predictors explained 45% of the total variance. © 2013.by iSER, International Society of Educational Research.