The Effects of Self-Regulated Learning on Community College Students\u27 Metacognition and Achievement in Developmental Math Courses

The effects of training in self-regulation on metacognition and math achievement were investigated in this study. The moderator effect of gender, age and ethnicity on the relationships between training and the outcomes of metacognition and math achievement were also explored. The participants for this study were 116 community college students enrolled in developmental math courses during the spring semester. Teachers volunteered their classes for the study; there were a total of 16 classes participating in the study over two four-week terms. Classrooms were bifurcated and students were randomly assigned to the treatment and control groups. Participants in the treatment group completed four self-regulated learning exercises modeled after Zimmerman\u27s (2002) cyclical self-regulated learning model. The exercises were completed weekly and repeated for a total of three weeks. Participants from both the treatment and control group completed a final exam to measure math achievement and an abbreviated version of the MSLQ to measure metacognition skills the last week of class. There was a significant difference between the two groups, suggesting that training in self-regulated learning improves math achievement and metacognitive skills of students in developmental math courses. Further investigation of the effects of training in self-regulated learning on math achievement and metacognition was explored by math subject. A significant difference was found in the lower level developmental math classes for Unit 2 (Decimals and Percent). Students in the treatment group had higher math achievement scores. For Unit 3 (Algebra Basics), there was a significant difference on the MSLQ scores (metacognition) favoring the treatment group. The findings suggest that training in self-regulated learning improves math achievement and metacognition levels of students taking the lower level developmental math courses. Moderator effects of the demographic variables were not observed, indicating that neither the relationship between training in self-regulated learning and math achievement nor the relationship between training in self-regulation learning and metacognition varied across gender, ethnicity, and age