Metacognitive awareness in relation to university students’ learning profiles

Abstract

The present study aims to deepen our understanding of the relationship between metacognitive awareness and approaches to learning in a multidisciplinary context of higher education using a person-oriented approach. The participants in the present study were 462 third year students of humanities, social sciences and theology. The students filled in a HowULearn questionnaire which included 18 items related to metacognitive awareness and 12 to approaches to learning. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to explore the factor structure of the instruments. The data were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation, K-means cluster analysis and One-way ANOVA. The results showed that two dimensions of metacognitive awareness, namely knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition, emerged from the data. Knowledge about cognition was evaluated higher than regulation of cognition. The results showed that both dimensions of metacognitive awareness were statistically significantly related to a deep approach to learning and organized studying and negatively to an unreflective approach. Furthermore, three learning profiles were identified and they differed in both of these dimensions of metacognitive awareness. More precisely, students representing organized students applying a deep approach had higher scores on knowledge about cognition as well as on regulation of cognition compared with the students representing unorganized studentsapplying a deep approach or those with a dissonant profile. In addition, students representing the dissonant profile had statistically significantly lower scores on knowledge about cognition than those students representing unorganized students applying a deep approach. The present study implies that students with different study profiles need different types of support for the metacognitive awareness of their own learning processes.