Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether strategies that were hypothesized as promoting metacognition were actually effective in boosting metacognitive knowledge during classes teaching "Integrated Studies." The first step was to create a set of questionnaires to measure metacognitive knowledge and establish self-monitoring activities that promote metacognition, which is the method of this study. Next, we put this into practice with a class of fifth-grade elementary school students. The results of the questionnaires, which were administered both before and after the class, suggested the following three points. First, self-monitoring activities that promote metacognition are effective in increasing metacognitive knowledge. Second, five factors of metacognitive knowledge were extracted for analysis. These factors were: problem solving, decision-making/checking, understanding/insight, communication, and understanding/correction. An investigation of these factors shows that while this method is effective for factors such as decision-making/checking, it has almost no impact on the factor understanding/ correction. Third, this method is likely to be more effective on children who have high levels of metacognition than those who have low levels of metacognition. These results showed that while this method is effective for increasing metacognitive knowledge, there is variance in its effectiveness, which is based on the factorial dimensions of metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive aptitude.
