Metacognition and Problem Solving: How Self-Coaching Helps First-Year Students Move Past the Discomfort of Monitoring

ABSTRACT Stronger metacognitive regulation skills are linked to increased academic achievement. Metacognition has primarily been studied using retrospective methods, but these methods limit access to students’ in-the-moment metacognition. We investigated first-year life science students’ in-the-moment metacognition while they solved challenging problems, and asked 1) What metacognitive regulation skills are evident when first-year life science students solve problems on their own? and 2) What aspects of learning self-efficacy do first-year life science students reveal when they solve problems on their own? Think aloud interviews were conducted with 52 first-year life science students across three institutions and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Our results reveal that first-year life science students use an array of monitoring and evaluating skills while solving problems, which challenges the deficit-oriented notion that students enter college with poor metacognitive skills. Additionally, a handful of students self-coached or encouraged themselves as they confronted aspects of the problems that were unfamiliar. These verbalizations suggest ways we can encourage students to couple their metacognitive regulation skills and self-efficacy to persist when faced with challenging disciplinary problems. Based on our findings, we offer recommendations for how instructors can help first-year life science students develop and strengthen their metacognition to achieve improved problem-solving performance.