Assessing the Metacognitive Awareness of Freshman University Students: Basis for the Development of an Instructional Material in Facilitating Student-Centered Teaching

Metacognitive knowledge is crucial for efficient independent learning because it fosters forethought and self-reflection. This study investigated the metacognitive awareness of the 90 education freshman students at Iloilo State University of Fisheries Science and Technology Main Campus Tiwi Site for Academic Year 2023-2024, Iloilo, Philippines. The analysis was undertaken using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences and descriptive and inferential statistics such as Mean, Standard Deviation, Frequency and Percentage, t-test, One-Wat ANOVA were used in the analysis at .05 significant level. Results revealed that students possess a very high level of implicit knowledge and knowledge related to methods, procedures or operation of equipment. However, they only demonstrate a moderate verbal or factual knowledge. In terms of regulation of cognition, students had extreme level of knowledge in the area of planning, comprehension monitoring, debugging strategies, and Evaluation. However, they demonstrate moderate level of awareness on information management strategies. In terms of regulation of cognition, student expressed an extreme level of skills in goal setting, and allocating resources prior to learning, assessing their own learning or strategy, and using appropriate strategies to correct comprehension and performance errors. But, they perceived some areas of improvement such as their ability and strategy sequences used to process information more efficiently such as organizing, elaborating, summarizing, and selective focusing. In terms of profile, gender orientation does not define what students know about themselves, strategies, and conditions under which strategies are most useful; and their knowledge about the way they plan, implement strategies, monitor, correct comprehension errors, and evaluate their learning. An instructional material must be developed for classroom used in areas such as Science, Physical Education, English, Mathematics, Filipino, and Social Science using metacognitive strategies through metacognitive questions to improve students’ metacognitive ability in process new information by planning and evaluating.