Rubrics: an instrument to develop teachers’ metacognitive awareness

Objective: The study aimed to determine the effect of rubrics as an instrument in order to develop teachers’ metacognitive awareness. Methodology: The sample consisted in one experimental group of 21 undergraduate students of a bachelor program in modern languages in a public university of Manizales city, Colombia. This quantitative study used a pre/test post/test quasi-experimental design (Hernández et al., 2014). The study was conducted in six weeks in which there was an intervention by using validated. These rubrics were calibrated and validated through the external experts’ validation technique (Robles Garrote & Rojas, 2015, Inventory for teachers (MAIT) (Balcikanli, 2011) was used to measure undergraduate teachers’ metacognitive awareness before and after the intervention. Results: The study revealed moderate increase of metacognitive awareness in participants, especially in declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge, just as planning for regulation of metacognition, as to the monitoring and evaluation skills there was no significant changes. Conclusion: The findings of the study showed moderated changes in the undergraduates’ metacognitive awareness. Therefore, it was evidence that rubrics could be an effective tool to develop undergraduate students in modern languages’ metacognitive awareness, particularly metacognitive knowledge: declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge. There was also moderate changes in planning; nonetheless, the study showed that regulatory skills such as monitoring and evaluation did not have any significant increase.