Date of Award

Winter 2024

Project Type

Dissertation

Program or Major

Physics

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

First Advisor

Dawn Meredith

Second Advisor

Karen Graham

Third Advisor

Valerie Otero

Abstract

The processes of metacognition are vital for students’ development of critical thinking skills and productive learning mindsets, yet many students never receive the direct instruction that would allow them to formally develop their metacognition. As instructors are typically not providing this instruction, there may be an alternate source to facilitate the learning of metacognition to students. This research study will investigate the viability of having peer coaches, undergraduate peer educators who help facilitate learning and problem solving in introductory STEM courses, facilitate metacognition to their students. Specifically, this research study aims to understand and characterize the metacognitive competence of the peer coaches to gauge how their own metacognition could inform their instruction of metacognition to undergraduate STEM students. The data for this project was collected from the peer coaches’ pedagogical training course, where they receive direct instruction in pedagogy, metacognition, and specific metacognitive practices. The analysis of the peer coaches’ written reflections led to the creation of an analytic framework for metacognitive competence. Overall, the peer coaches were found to have a strong level of metacognitive competence, demonstrating many specific and nuanced applications across the different aspects of their metacognition use. Peer coaches showed this metacognitive competence in both their roles as undergraduate students and facilitative coaches, which included distinct characteristics in both perspectives and a productive interplay between the two perspectives. The peer coaches also demonstrated a strong, positive orientation towards metacognition as a collection of topics that is worth both learning and teaching. Taken together, these characteristics of peer coaches’ metacognitive competence comprise a generalized profile for how an ideal metacognitive coach may operate. These findings indicate that peer coaches have the necessary metacognitive competence and orientation towards metacognition to act as metacognitive coaches, where they can facilitate the learning of metacognition and metacognitive practices to their students based on their extensive understanding of the topic.

Download

Share

COinS