Strategy acquisition by children with general learning difficulties through metacognitive training
Year: 2010
Type: article
Study design: Clinical Trial
Abstract: Children with general learning difficulties commonly show lower school success and have a slower rate of learning. They show limited and inefficient strategy use in all kinds of tasks. Efficient strategy use requires a certain degree of metacognitive knowledge and executive control. A sample of 16 children (ages 8 to 12) with learning difficulties participated in a 3-month metacognitive training intervention that alternated between curriculum-related and curriculum-unrelated tasks. The children were indirectly taught cognitive and metacognitive strategies by means of guided prompting. The application of the strategies and the children's metacognitive knowledge were evaluated through observation of their behavior and verbalizations. Children showed progress in strategy use and metacognitive knowledge in both types of tasks, but it was only in the more concrete strategies that a positive correlation was found between application and quality of reflection. It is hypothesized that children perceived these concrete strategies to be of most practical value and they were therefore able to reflect most accurately on their use.
Institution: University of Geneva
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2025259097