Assessing Metacognitive Regulation during Problem Solving: A Comparison of Three Measures

Metacognition is hypothesized to play a central role in problem solving and self-regulated learning. Various measures have been developed to assess metacognitive regulation, including survey items in questionnaires, verbal protocols, and metacognitive judgments. However, few studies have examined whether these measures assess the same metacognitive skills or are related to the same learning outcomes. To explore these questions, we investigated the relations between three metacognitive regulation measures given at various points during a learning activity and subsequent test. Verbal protocols were collected during the learning activity, questionnaire responses were collected after the learning tasks but before the test, and judgments of knowing (JOKs) were collected during the test. We found that the number of evaluation statements as measured via verbal protocols was positively associated with students’ responses on the control/debugging and evaluation components of the questionnaire. There were also two other positive trends. However, the number of monitoring statements was negatively associated with students’ responses on the monitoring component of the questionnaire and their JOKs on the later test. Each measure was also related to some aspect of performance, but the particular metacognitive skill, the direction of the effect, and the type of learning outcome differed across the measures. These results highlight the heterogeneity of outcomes across the measures, with each having different affordances and constraints for use in research and educational practice.