The role of metacognitive skills in learning to solve problems

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these skills in order to solve KM problems. They at least have their
generic skills to tackle new problems. Students who are weak in metacognition
(the MS− group), get lost more easily in the learning environment,
since they have no good starting point. They therefore achieve
suboptimal results. This represents an interaction effect of condition
and use of metacognitive skills (see figure 6.1).
Figure 6.1.
Hypothesized interaction effect of metacognition on learning results.
6.1.3 Measurement of metacognition
In study I (chapter 4) literature was presented about prospective,
concurrent and retrospective measurement of the use of metacognitive
skills. The conclusion was that a concurrent measure is to be preferred
since it represents a direct behavioural measure as opposed to having
to rely on self-assessment of participants. However, a serious drawback
of concurrent measures, such as protocol analysis, is that it is quite
time-consuming. Therefore, in the previous studies, prospective and
retrospective measures have been used.
An additional question was to what extent these measures were related
to learning success. In the pilot study, there is some evidence that transfer
of learning occurs, but it is not related to retrospectively measured
self-reported use of metacognitive skills. In the second study, learning is
successful in terms of the acquisition of declarative and procedural knowledge.
Again, the self-reported use of metacognitive skills is measured,
this time prior to task performance. It shows no relation with learning.
One assumption was that prospective and retrospective measurements
of metacognition are measuring a different theoretical construct. When
one focuses on measuring metacognition prior to task performance, and