Young Children's Spontaneous Manifestation of Self-Regulation and Metacognition during Constructional Play Tasks (original) (raw)
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The aim of this study is to investigate metacognitive and self-regulatory abilities of young children at the age of 4 and 5 in mathematics activities. Meanwhile, another aim is to understand interactions of these abilities of young children with their mathematical skills and pedagogical context that support these abilities of young children. The observational method to display metacognitive and self-regulatory abilities of young children provides opportunities to observe children in a naturalistic manner. Moreover, it helps to collect evidence of these skills during children’s mathematics activities which are meaningful for children. 16 children from 4 year old group and 17 children from 5 year old group participate in this study. The findings show that young children exhibit metacognitive knowledge of persons (i. e. self, other), tasks and strategies; and metacognitive regulation (i. e. planning, monitoring, control and evaluation). Besides, the interaction between metacognitive and self-regulatory abilities of young children and their mathematical skills is identified. Moreover, the pedagogical context where children are supported emotionally, they are challenged in cognitive activities, they are provided with opportunities of feeling of control and of articulating their thinking is pointed out as the important factors to support these abilities of young children.
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The development of the capacity for self-regulation represents a major achievement of childhood that is associated with social, behavioural and academic competence. Most research has focused on self-regulated academic learning in school-aged children and adolescents, neglecting developmental aspects of self-regulation. This paper reports a longitudinal study of 44 children from early to middle childhood. At age 2, the Goodman Lock Box provided information about the extent to which children’s approaches were systematic and planful, as opposed to random, impulsive and disorganised. The same measure was used in a modified form at age 8, and two additional measures of planning and self-control were added: the Porteus Maze Test and the Grocery Shopping Task. At both ages, Lock Box competence was related to planfulness, and there was a significant correlation of Lock Box competence across the two ages. However, the various measures of self-regulation were unrelated. Several measurement is...
Metacognition and Learning, 2012
This study aimed to better understand how metacognitive skills develop in young children aged 5 to 7 years. In particular, we addressed whether developmental changes reflect quantitative or qualitative improvements, and how metacognitive skills change with age and task-specific ability. Previous research into the development of metacognitive skills has been somewhat limited by methodology—often there is an over-reliance on language skills and it is assumed that children are fully conscious of the skills they use. In this study, a new observational method was developed which aimed to better represent young children’s (n = 66) metacognitive skills by coding their verbalizations and non-verbal behavior during a problem-solving task. This method proved to be developmentally sensitive and illustrated both a quantitative increase in metacognitive skills, and qualitative changes in the types of monitoring and planning used throughout early development. Further, the results indicated that monitoring processes improve with age, control processes improve with both age and task-specific ability, and ‘failures of metacognitive skills’ are primarily affected by task-specific ability rather than age.
Effect of Self-Regulating Behaviour on Young Children's Academic Success
This article leads to several conclusions regarding self-regulation in young children which does affect academic outcomes for those who transition to formal schooling from a preschool environment. Herein we argue that children who are good self-regulators will realize greater academic success than those who cannot self-regulate in the later elementary grades. These conclusions are noteworthy given the importance placed on self-regulatory behaviour by teachers, particularly in the Early Learning Kindergarten (ELK) program where students must interact through open play with peers. The ability to self-regulate in this environment allows students to work collaboratively with others and problem solve without the intervention.
Metacognition and Learning, 2021
Metacognition—knowledge, monitoring, and regulation of cognition—is key to learning and academic achievement. This is robustly supported for K-12 and higher education learners while empirical evidence in early childhood is encouraging but limited. To address these gaps in the literature, our first goal was to investigate early metacognition across two developmentally appropriate measures. Our second goal was to examine associations to executive function and motivation. Participants were 77 preschoolers, aged 3–5. Metacognition was measured using a metacognitive knowledge interview (declarative metacognition) and a metacognitive skills observational scale (procedural), both in the context of a problem-solving puzzle task. Executive function was assessed with the Head Toes Knees Shoulder measure and motivation was operationalized as persistence (time on task) on the puzzle. All children exhibited evidence of metacognitive knowledge and skills. Declarative and procedural metacognition were significantly and positively related to one another and to executive function and motivation, though to varying degrees. Controlling for language and age, metacognition significantly and positively predicted executive function and motivation. Metacognitive knowledge predicted executive function and metacognitive skills predicted motivation. Results contribute to psychology and education by reinforcing recent findings that metacognition develops far younger than was originally thought, and explicating relations between and providing models for assessing early metacognition, executive function, and motivation. We propose that these skills are intentionally fostered in early childhood.
Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology, 2007
The authors present findings from a large 2-year study exploring the development of self-regulatory and metacognitive abilities in young children (aged 3 to 5 years) in educational naturalistic settings in the United Kingdom (English Nursery and Reception classrooms). Three levels of analysis were conducted based on observational codings of categories of metacognitive and self-regulatory behaviors. These analyses supported the view that, within the 3- to 5-year age range, there was extensive evidence of metacognitive behaviors that occurred most frequently during learning activities that were initiated by the children, involved them in working in pairs or small groups, unsupervised by adults, and that involved extensive collaboration and talk (i.e., learning contexts that might be characterized as peer-assisted learning). Relative to working individually or in groups with adult support, children in this age range working in unsupervised small groups showed more evidence of metacogni...