Primary school students’ awareness of their monitoring and regulation judgment accuracy

Abstract

Background: Improving students' monitoring and regulation judgment accuracy is necessary for improving the effectiveness of self-regulated learning, but might not be sufficient: Students presumably also need to feel confident about the accuracy of their judgments to act upon them. However, little is known about students’ awareness of their monitoring judgment accuracy, and awareness of their regulation judgment accuracy has not yet been investigated. Aims: We investigated (1) primary school students’ awareness of their monitoring and regulation judgment accuracy in mathematics and (2) whether self-scoring, which is known to improve monitoring/regulation accuracy, would also improve awareness of their regulation judgment accuracy. Sample(s): Primary school students (9-10 year-olds) from 34 classes (N = 564). Methods: Students completed problem-solving tasks twice (parallel versions) on two different days and made monitoring/regulation judgments, rated their confidence in the accuracy of those judgments, self-scored their work, and again made (confidence) judgments, on both occasions. If an increase/decrease in judgment accuracy from day 1 to day 2 would be accompanied by an increase/decrease in their confidence in the accuracy of their judgements, students show accuracy awareness. Results: Students' judgment accuracy did not predict their confidence in the accuracy of their judgments, indicating that students were not aware of their monitoring/regulation accuracy. Self-scoring improved students’ awareness of their regulation judgment accuracy for students whose regulation judgment accuracy increased or stayed maximally accurate after self-scoring, but not for students whose regulation judgment accuracy decreased or stayed equally inaccurate after self-scoring. Conclusions: Primary school students were not aware of their monitoring/regulation judgment accuracy. Self-scoring improved the awareness of their regulation judgment accuracy for some students.