Exploring the Correlation between Metacognitive Skills and Retention of Students in Different Learning Strategies in Biology Classroom

Abstract

Metacognitive skills were believed to contribute on vary of cognitive activity of students, including the retention. This research was conducted during one semester in four different classes that were taught biology by using four different learning strategies: Problem-based Learning (PBL), Reading Questioning and Answering (RQA), PBL integrated with RQA (PBLRQA), and multi-strategy. This research explored the correlation between metacognitive skills with retention of students in the four different strategies, and compared the four regression lines whether or not they are parallel. The research results showed that the correlations between metacognitive skills and students’ retention were significant. The results of the analysis of variance related to the regression equation in the four different strategies were parallel and not coincide and the regression line of RQA strategy was at the highest position. It indicated that this strategy has the potency to empower metacognitive skills and simultaneously maintained the students’ retention. It would be important information for lecturers that they should empower the metacognitive skills through the appropriate learning strategies because it was believed could affected the students’ retention.

Keywords: metacognitive skills, retention, problem-based learning, reading questioning answering, regression line.