Metacognition : What Roles Does It Play in Students’ Academic Performance?

This paper discusses metacognition, defined as thinking about one’s own thinking, and its relation ship to student’s academic performance. A number of previous studies have shown that metacognition and intelligence were associated, and there fore suggested that students who have metacognition end to be successful learners. This paper also reports on a study investigating the relationship between students’ academic achievement and metacognitive awareness, which has been done at a private secondary school in Kuching. An established instrument by Schraw and Dennison’s Metacognitive Awareness Inventory is used for the purpose of this study

Oral Reading Intervention for an English Language Learner: A Single-case Design

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the effectiveness of conducting a reading intervention in a public primary school setting in Chinese vernacular school in Malaysia. Literature indicated that struggling readers did not master letter-sound correspondences despite the phonics was emphasised in to date curriculum. One male learner who was identified by his classroom teacher as needing special assistance in reading performance participated this research. Using a single-case research design, the participant’s oral reading fluency (ORF) in terms of word correct per minute (WCPM) was measured. Several nonparametric statistics methods, such as Tau and percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND) were applied to compute the degree of association and effectiveness of the intervention, respectively. Visual analysis was carried out to interpret the graph. The data collected was also compared with the updated ORF norm that was established in the United States. The results revealed that the reading intervention facilitated the improvement of ORF of the participant. The significant implications and future research recommendations on the development of reading intervention were highlighted

Exploring the Growth of Reflective Practice in Higher Education

Reflective practice is a process to explore the mental states of oneself, and others which allow students to experience deep learning. This practice increases the active engagement of students and personal ownership of self-development. Active thinking is also required which involves attentional control and meta-cognition. This study aims to explore the growth of reflective practice among psychology undergraduate students. A total of twenty-five (25) first-year psychology students from a university in Malaysia participated in this study. Participants have to write reflective journals related to specific learning topics for 10 weeks. Each reflective writing received personalised feedback from the researcher based on the five levels of the reflective practice coding scheme. A total of 138 reflective practice documents were analysed and categorised from Category 0 (non-reflective) to Category 4 (Critical reflective practice). The frequency of the five levels, reflective practice responses, and measures of academic performance was collected. Findings from this study support previous research on the positive contribution of reflective practice. It addresses the efficacy of response frequency to scaffold academic performance. The improvement of reflective practice styles requires a high level of effort, active thinking, and working memory activation

Sociodemographic Determinants of Acculturation Stress Among International University Students

The study attempted to identify which sociodemographic factors predict acculturation stress and also to examine the levels of acculturation stress amongst 208 international students enrolled in a Malaysian university. A convenience sampling technique was implemented for data collection by utilizing a self-reported questionnaire. As for the sociodemographic factors predict acculturation stress multiple regression analyses demonstrated that among the independent variables, family support, year of study, difficulties in comprehending lectures, and strains of relationship with boyfriend/girlfriend had significant predictive effects on acculturation stress. Young and male international students expressed significantly higher levels of acculturation stress than their older and female counterparts. Students who acknowledged strong family support and were single depicted lesser acculturative stress compared to those with inadequate support and were in a romantic relationship. As for the levels of acculturation stress, findings revealed that acculturation stress was relatively high amongst most of the international students. Perceptions of discrimination and rejection, as well as feelings of homesickness and fear were portrayed by large numbers of students

Does Reflective Practice And Personalised Feedback Foster Learning?

Reflective practice is proven as an evidence-based approach in education science. It guides learners to actively engage in critical evaluation of their thoughts, actions, and experience to construct a meaningful framework of understanding. Implementation of reflective practice in learning nurtures students’ self-directed learning to be accountable for their learning journey (Knowles, Gilbourne, Borrie, & Nevill, 2001). Eventually, they can experience deep learning (Parry, Walsh, Larsen, & Hogan, 2012), with the activation of active thinking (Louis & Sutton, 1991) and working memory. The growth of reflective practice requires a high level of attentional control, and metacognition to produce a large spectrum of content knowledge with various mental languages (emotive, volitive, and cognitive). However, the contents of reflective practice have to be guided with personalised feedbacks by the instructors to foster the quality of reflective practice. The instructor has to be catered with the structured rubric of evaluation to provide professional feedback to the student's reflective writing. Therefore, in this study, each reflective writing produced by the student was evaluated based on five categories of the reflective style produced by Bruno & Gilardi (2014)