Mind over math: the role of metacognition in college students' academic success

This dissertation examined whether completing metacognition interventions predicts students’ academic goals and outcomes in a high-enrollment College Algebra course. Metacognition is a tool to help students engage with and reflect on their learning process, as well as consider how they can implement changes in their behavior in the future. Using multiple regression, I analyzed whether students’ completion of metacognition journals predicted their learning goals, course grades, and retention to the following fall, as well as how that varied by several student attributes (e.g., race, class participation, first-generation status, receiving federal financial aid, sense of belonging). The findings suggest that completing metacognition journals was significantly associated with students’ grade outcomes, but not with learning goals or retention. Students who completed all assigned metacognition journals had better grades than students who completed no journals, while students who completed some of the journals had worse grades than students who completed no journals. An implication of this study is the usefulness of embedding metacognition interventions into courses. Additionally, it is important for instructors to engage with students about metacognition and to consider how they design, implement, and facilitate metacognition interventions. Academic departments should assess their readiness to implement metacognition interventions and ensure that the instructors are supportive of these efforts.