Determining Correlations Between Global History Teacher’s Metacognitive Awareness and Teaching Demographics

Abstract

Partnership for 21^st Century Skills has continuously identified critical and metacognitive thinking skills to be essential for life and career in post-secondary education and workforce settings. As a response to the Race to the Top (2010) initiative and Common Core State Standards (2009), New York State Board of Regents began an overhaul for all the curriculum standards and anchored assessments. These changes require comprehensive preparation for teachers to effectively transfer thinking practices and skills to their students. Educators and constituents have been consistently apprehensive of its implementation due to the needed preparedness and implications of high-stakes evaluative measures. The purpose of this study was to provide new knowledge about the potential predictors of Global History & Geography II New Framework teachers’ use of the six subfactors of the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory for Teachers as they shift their instructional pedagogy and modality for students in preparation for the high-stakes assessment, which is a New York state graduation requirement. The inventory was administered to 56 Global History & Geography II teachers throughout Long Island, NY via online survey prior to the first administration of the Global History & Geography II New Framework assessment in June 2019. Multiple correlation analyses indicate that there are significant differences among the participants in the influence of potential predictor variables for declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge, planning awareness, evaluation awareness, and monitoring awareness. The study found that there is a significant correlation between the different components of metacognition and the level of education as well as the number of years of experience of the teacher. Specifically, teachers with a post-graduate education with professional training, as well as those with more years of teaching experience, demonstrated higher levels of correlation between the different metacognitive components. This suggests that a teacher’s own education and professional development coupled with teaching experience are important factors in teachers developing their own metacognitive skills, as well as impact their ability to teach metacognitive strategies to students.