Helping students to develop effective ways to deal with information is a major goal of educational systems. This study aims at clarifying if it is possible to implement cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies by permanent stimulation and instruction over a long period of time in regular courses. Participants (N = 1134) are provided into experimental versus control conditions. Study was conducted primarily to answer the following research question: Do using learning strategies in standard courses improve learning outcomes of reading comprehension? Results reveal that it is possible to integrate cognitive and metacognitive strategies into standard instructions and that it is beneficial on long-term comprehension for tenth graders.

Theoretical framework

Using cognitive and metacognitive strategies can help students to obtain better results in learning. However using cognitive learning strategies only is sufficient if learners don not plan, monitor and regulate their strategy use within the learning process. Therefore teaching should not only focus on the results of learning but also on processes of learning including techniques and strategies how to learn (Artelt, 1999; Weinstein & Mayer, 1986). Obviously it is not sufficient only to have knowledge about learning strategies. Additionally, one has to know when and how to use them effectively (Boekarts, 1999; Forrest-Pressley & Waller, 1984; Veenman, 1993). Training studies under laboratory conditions have shown that learning outcome is even improved when training is not restricted to cognitive learning strategies but is combined with teaching metacognitive strategies (Leutner & Leopold, 2003, 2006). Our study aims at clarifying if it is possible to implement cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies by permanent stimulation and instruction in authentic school courses. We conducted a quasi-experimental field study to test the following hypothesis: The use of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies in science courses improves learning achievement from reading science texts. We expect students of a training group receiving our strategy training and using it during lessons to achieve higher learning outcome than students in a control group with regular courses.

Methods

Our research deals with cognitive organizational reading strategies and metacognitive strategies. As learning often means learning from texts these strategies aim at supporting reading comprehension from texts (Weinstein & Mayer, 1986) during lessons. This encoding of important information often is not enough to stimulate deeper learning processes and to regulate them. Having self-contained different representations of the information that has to be learned one can lead to improve learning (Mayer, 2001) by meaning deeper understanding.

Additionally a metacognitive strategy tool on each cognitive strategy was implemented (Winne, 2001; Zimmerman, 2000).

We tested the effectiveness of using these combined strategy-tools for half a school year (five months) in regular courses with a pre, post and follow-up data collection. Teachers who instructed two parallel science courses of tenth graders participated in this study with their students. Teachers were also instructed how to train students and work with strategies during classes on one of their two courses (training group). The parallel course of each teacher (control group) received standard instruction. Learning outcomes were tested using a content-valid multiple-choice test on reading comprehension of a science text.

Data source

During the 5 months of the study it became obvious that not all of the teachers (N=50) implemented the training program appropriately. Thus, we restricted our analyses to courses of teachers who strictly followed our instruction. The resulting sample consists of 54 courses (27 experimental courses and the parallel control courses; N_students= 1134).The mean age of the participants at the second measuring point was M = 16.8 years, the distribution of the sexes was nearly balanced.

Results

The following analysis concerns the post and follow-up-test (after three month) data between experimental and control groups. A repeated-measure analysis (ANCOVA) of reading comprehension as dependent variable shows that there is no difference in learning outcomes between groups in the post-test F(1,1125) = 2.27; p=.130; d=0.07. But looking on follow-up data we find a significant effect on long-term knowledge F(1,1125) = 12.48; p<.001; d=0.29.

Thus, our hypothesis could be supported. Using learning strategies in courses leads to better results on comprehension in learning outcomes.

Educational importance

Results of the study reveal that it is possible to integrate cognitive and metacognitive strategies into standard instructions and to produce better long-term learning outcome than regular science courses do. Furthermore, great evidence exists that high-lighting as a rehearsal strategy (Weinstein & Mayer, 1986), visualization (Mayer, 1994) and concept-mapping (Chang et al., 2002) as organizational strategies can help students to construct internal connections among different facts by fostering reading comprehension. Especially the long-term effect shows that students who learn in school courses with supporting cognitive and metacognitive strategies process information deeper in long term memory and they have the ability to deal with this information after a long period of time. Because oblivion of necessary information is very bad the use of learning and self-regulated strategies helps to remember detailed information for building up coherence of subjects.

References

Artelt, C. (1999). Lernstrategien und Lernerfolg – eine handlungsnahe Studie. [Learning strategies and learning achievement]. Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und pädagogische Psychologie, 31, 86-96.

Boekaerts, M. (1999). Self-regulated learning: Where we are today. International Journal of Educational Research, 31, 445 – 475.

Chang, K., Sung, Y. & Chen, I. (2002). The effect of concept-mapping to enhance text comprehension and summarization. Journal of Experimental Education, 71, 5-23.

Forrest-Pressley, D.L & Waller, T.G. (1984). Cognition, metacognition and reading. New York: Springer.

Leutner, D. & Leopold, C. (2003). Selbstreguliertes Lernen: Lehr-/lerntheoretische Grundlagen. [Self-regulated learning: Theoretical learning and instructional basics]. In: U. Witthaus, W. Wittwer, C. Espe. (Eds.): Selbst gesteuertes lernen. Theoretische und praktische Zugänge. (pp. 43–67). Bielefeld: Bertelsmann.

Leutner, D. & Leopold, C. (2006). Selbstregulation beim Lernen aus Sachtexten. [Self-regulated learning by learning from schience texts]. In: H. Mandl & H.F. Friedrich (Eds.), Handbuch Lernstrategien (pp. 162-171). Göttingen: Hogrefe.

Mayer, R.E. (1994). Visual aids to knowledge construction. Building mental representations from pictures and words. In: W Schnotz & R.W. Kulhavy, (Eds.): Comprehension of graphics. (pp. 125-138). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science B.V.

Mayer, R.E. (2001). Multimedia Learning. Cambridge: CUP.

Veenman, M.V.J. (1993). Metacognitive ability and metacognitive skill: Determinants of discovery learning in computerized learning environments. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.

Weinstein, C.E. & Mayer, R.E. (1986). The teaching of learning strategies. In: M.C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (Vol. 3, pp. 315 – 327). New York: Macmillan.

Winne, P.H. (2001). Self-regulated learning viewed from models of information processing. In: B.J. Zimmerman & D.H. Schunk (Eds.), Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: Theoretical perspectives (2nd ed., pp. 153-189). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Zimmerman, B.J. (2000). Attaining self-regulation: A social cognitive perspective. In: M. Boekaerts, P.R. Pintrich & M. Zeidner (Eds.): Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 13-41). San Diego: Academic Press.