Cognition, Metacognition and Academic Performance

An East Asian Perspective

Michael C. W. Yip, Michael C. W. Yip

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317211464
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Learning strategies and academic performance have been extensively investigated but relatively few studies were conducted in East Asia. This volume presents a reflection on the current status of metacognition and academic performance in the East Asian region. It serves to provide a more complete picture of the global study of how students' learning and studying strategies affect their acdemic performance. This book will be of interest to researchers and educators in the area of education, education psychology, cross-cultural studies, education policy, curriculum and instruction and regional studies.

1
Cognition, metacognition and academic performance

What are the differences between East Asian and the Western?

Michael C. W. Yip

Introduction

Previous researches demonstrated that different cognitive strategies used by students (including university students, distance-learning students and college students with or without learning disabilities) could differentiate and well predicted their respective academic performance. The patterns of results are also consistent across different countries over the world. Along with the metacognitive development processes of the students, their academic performance will simultaneously influence their perceptions on their own cognitive strategies due to the jolt effects of individual’s self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997). For example, Bandura and his colleague reported in a study that students with a high self-efficacy rating were more willing to be persistent in facing challenging tasks than the students with a low self-efficacy rating (Bandura & Schunk, 1981). At the same time, students’ self-efficacy would be greatly influenced by the continuing feedback received on their academic results or academic performance, as well as their own attributions and interpretations of that feedback (Bandura, 1993; Schunk & Gunn, 1986). As a result, it creates a close linkage among the three main factors: cognitive strategies, metacognitive processes and academic performance. Therefore, to unfold the dynamics of these relations is a theoretically important question to our understanding of the basic learning processes of students (Weinstein, Husman, & Dierking, 2000), and then to further understanding of the academic achievement of students.

Educational and psychological studies in this line of research have been extensively investigated in Western countries and only few studies were conducted in East Asian countries until recently. Due to the fundamental differences of educational context and culture between East and the West, researchers should alert the applications of those theories or models built by the research findings from the Western countries when formulating the educational policy in their own country. Therefore, it is a dire need to have a comparative approach in this line of research in order to obtain a comprehensive picture on this important topic. This book is among the first one in this research theme to present a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art research on the relationships among cognitive factors, metacognitive factors and academic performance in the East Asian region. All the contributions included in this book offer an overview of the application of theories and new developments on this topic in the East Asian region. A common goal of this book is to catalyze future research on unlocking the relationships among those important factors on academic performance in particular and learning in general.

During the past two decades, different scholars produced many fascinating works on this topic from an Asian perspective (Kember & Watkins, 2010; King & Bernardo, 2016; King & McInerney, 2016; Salili, Chiu, & Hong, 2001). This book aims primarily to continue the spirit to gather together a collection of excellent research papers that reflect the recent development from an East Asian perspective.

Highlights of the chapters

In the first part of the book, five chapters with exciting new data and systematic review are presented to examine the current status quo to the relationships among cognitive factors, metacognitive strategies and academic performance of students in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

In Chapter 2, Hong, Peng, Rowell and O’Neil, Jr. investigated the role of metacognitive and motivational strategies used by high school students during the test preparation, testing and homework processes. Under the self-regulated learning framework, the research team observed that the general academic performance was uniquely related to the Chinese cultural and educational contexts. In Chapter 3, Wang and Kim investigated how the self-efficacy profiles of Chinese high school students affected the learning performance of English (L2) and they found that the performance results were closely related to the use of self-regulated learning strategies by the student. In Chapter 4, Cheng and Fung used a motivational perspective to explain the outstanding academic performance of Hong Kong students in international assessment tests (such as PIRLS, PISA, TIMSS, etc.). But, they also observed that the psychological well-being of the students suffered behind the scenes. Hence, the research team claimed that the effects of learning motivation, along with the cultural and educational environments in Hong Kong, seem to be a double-edged sword to facilitate to students’ learning. In Chapter 5, Downing and Leung provided an excellent systematic review of the development of metacognition of Hong Kong university students and the mediating role of learning experience of Hong Kong university students on their academic performance. The information is particularly important for those researching instructional and curriculum design. In Chapter 6, Wu used the empirical data of the Taiwan Assessment of Student Achievement (TASA) to illuminate the relationships among cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies and academic performance of Taiwanese students. Based on the results, several measures to enhance students’ academic performance and learning are suggested.

In the second part of the book, four chapters concerning the same issues about the relationships among cognitive factors, metacognitive strategies and academic performance of students in Japan, Singapore and South Korea are presented.

In Chapter 7, based on their empirical study of language learning performance of Japanese students, Takeuchi and Ikeda suggested the importance of the social dimension (influence of teachers, peers and their interactions in the classroom) as well as affective variables (motivation, anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs) on metacognitive decision making and learning. In Chapter 8, Uesaka, Fukaya, and Ichikawa proposed new approaches to classroom instruction and teacher professional development that aims to achieve deep understanding and learning skills. The researchers further presented empirical evidence on the outcomes of the new approaches used in mathematics education in Japan. The results confirmed the positive benefits of these approaches on improving the quality of teachers’ instruction and thereby improving students’ use of learning strategies. As a result, they demonstrated that academic performance of the Japanese students was enhanced finally. In Chapter 9, Luo examined the mutual relationship among implicit beliefs of ability, help-seeking tendencies and students’ academic achievement by a representative large sample of secondary students in Singapore. The results showed differentiated associations among those variables. Implications of the results were discussed in terms of the academic context of Singapore. In Chapter 10, Shin, Kim and Kim offered a rich source of information on Korean students’ learning strategies. The research team reviewed the past twenty years of research studies focusing on Korean students learning and then provided solid empirical data from a large sample of Korean high school students on the relations of Korean students’ learning strategies to academic achievement, effort and interest through a person-centered approach. The results showed that the cultural characteristics of Korean students largely affects their metacognition and learning processes.

Conclusion

We know that it is almost impossible to include all the exciting research in this area in a single book but we believe that this edition can provide up-to-date research findings on some of the important educational psychological studies from an East Asian point of view. Contributions to this book include not only chapters from empirical studies which use a wide variety of conceptual foundations, different theoretical perspectives and methodologies, but also chapters from systematic reviews of those issues. We sincerely hope that this book serves the prime purpose of catalyzing more of a different, new research direction in this area and is simply, as the Chinese idiom reads, “拋磚引玉”. (literally means to throw out a sprat to catch a mackerel)

References

Bandura, A. (1993). Perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning. Educational Psychologist, 28, 117–148.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W. H. Freeman.

Bandura, A., & Schunk, D. H. (1981). Cultivating competence, self-efficacy, and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 586–598.

Kember, D., & Watkins, D. (2010). Approaches to learning and teaching by the Chinese. In M. H. Bond (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of Chinese psychology (pp. 169–185). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press.

King, R. B., & Bernardo, A. B. I. (Eds.). (2016). The psychology of Asian learners: A festschrift in honor of David Watkins. Singapore: Springer.

King, R. B., & McInerney, D. M. (2016). Culturalizing motivation research in educational psychology. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 1–7.

Salili, F., Chiu, C. Y., & Hong, Y. Y. (Eds.). (2001). Student motivation: The culture and context of learning. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

Schunk, D., & Gunn, T. (1986). Self-efficacy and skill development: Influence of task strategies and attributions. Journal of Educational Research, 79, 238–244.

Weinstein, C. E., Husman, J., & Dierking, D. R. (2000). Interventions with a focus on learning strategies. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 727–747). San Diego: Academic Press.

Part I
Cognition, metacognition and academic performance in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan

2
Relations of metacognitive and motivational strategies to test and homework performance in Chinese students

Eunsook Hong, Yun Peng, Lonnie Rowell and Harold F. O’Neil, Jr.

Introduction

Learners’ self-regulated uses of cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational strategies in academic contexts have been examined mostly within the social-cognitive theoretical framework (Bandura, 1986; Zimmerman, 2000, 2008) and the expectancy-value theory (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). The construct “self-regulated learning” is derived from earlier work by Flavell (1979) and Bandura (1986). Flavell defined metacognition in areas such as metacognitive experience, metacognitive knowledge, activation of strategies, and goals. Baker and Brown (1984) separated metacognition into knowledge about cognition (awareness and monitoring/appraisal of cognitive process) and regulation of cognition (planning and evaluating). From this, the meaning of the term “regulation” took different turns into contemporary “self-regulation” in learning, notably by Bandura (1986) and Zimmerman (2000), who later included the motivation component in the description of self-regulated learning.

According to the social-cognitive perspective (Zimmerman, 2000), self-regulation is defined as thoughts, affects, and behaviors used to attain learning goals. According to Zimmerman and Bandura (1994), self-regulated learners enlist self-reactive influences to motivate their efforts and use appropriate strategies to achieve success. Thus, self-regulated learners are responsible for their own learning, metacognitively and motivationally directing their own learning processes (e.g., Zimmerman, 1989, 2000), planning, monitoring, self-evaluating, and selecting proper cognitive strategies at various stages of learning process (i.e., metacognitive component), and are self-efficacious, regulate their efforts, and demonstrate persistence when they encounter difficult tasks (i.e., motivational component) (e.g., Wolters, 2003; Zimmerman, 2000).

Contemporary perspectives of motivation such as the expectancy-value theory emphasize such constructs as task value and interest, in addition to self-efficacy and effort investm...