The role of metacognitive skills in learning to solve problems

126
Distribution Frequency
1 high 2 low 6
2 high 1 low 5
0 high 3 low 2
3 high 0 low 1
1 high 1 low 1
2 high 0 low 1
Total 16
Table 6.11. Distribution of high and low scorers in teams on self-reported metacognitive
skills measured retrospectively.
more frequent use of these skills (and gain low to average scores on the
knowledge test) should have a more active role in solving the KM problems.
The protocol of team 86 in the model condition was investigated
more closely in this respect.
Limited evidence is found for this assumption. One student in this
team appears to be rather passive. This student mostly writes contributions
that focus on speeding up the problem solving process such
as “Verder” [Continue] or “Wat maakt het ook uit, kom maar verder”
[what does it matter, come on, let’s continue]. This student self-reports
the less frequent use of metacognitive skills and he reaches quite a high
post-test score on general procedural knowledge (0.72).
The active student is the one who writes the yearly report (an obligatory
‘reflective’ moment in quarter 5) and this student writes contributions
that indicate reflections on the problem solving process. He
comments, for instance, that an event-related strategy is possibly not
sufficient for managing the knowledge household optimally. He also gives
some explanations for results found. This student actually reports that
he uses metacognitive skills to a greater extent than the former student.
This limited qualitative investigation shows that the ‘free-rider’
hypothesis could be true (Kerr & Bruun, 1983). This hypothesis could
be investigated more thoroughly in future research.
As for the hypothesized between-subjects interaction effect concerning
condition and metacognition (see hypotheses 3 and 4) table 6.12 and
table 6.13 give an overview of the descriptive statistics. The results
in table 6.14 show that no significant interaction effects exist regarding
between-subject effects.