Moving Metacognitive Regulation Beyond Curriculum and into Culture

Underrepresented (UR) university students approach postsecondary studies in multitudes; yet are minorities in the larger landscape. They are less prepared given sustained societal and systemic inequities, and face added obstacles to success and marginalization in postsecondary settings. To empower them and redress pervasive deficit framing, I evaluated the impacts of a distinctive training system in explicit metacognitive regulation (MR) on low performing, UR university students’ skills and agency. Metacognition, or “thinking about thinking” and self-regulation, the successful control of learning processes are critical to students’ learning and achievement. While institutionalized MR teachings characteristically occur in discipline specific or ‘learning to learn’ courses, the challenges of restricted access and stigmatization of UR students are also pervasive. MR training with explicit motivational theory as content, which is also discipline-flexible and culturally driven, is nonexistent. I used mixed data, bound in a descriptive case study to measure the impacts of this nuanced training. To determine initial impacts, I obtained the participants’ pre to post scores on the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory and Self-Regulation Skills Inventory-Self Report. I interviewed participants six months after training as well, to investigate their extended applications of MR skill for agency. MRT participants significantly improved in MR skill initially and used such skills for agency in their academic lives in the two semesters after training. The students also exerted behaviors in their academic contexts to exemplify Bandura’s (1986) agency tenets – Intentionality, Forethought, Self-Reactiveness and Self-Reflectiveness. I attribute the MRT participants’ successes to the integration of explicit motivation theory topics, cultural relevance and context autonomy in training, with implications and recommendations to researchers and practitioners. I encourage future research studies evaluating such intentional MR training systems, which can subsidize agency within these culturally nuanced college learners.