Affect and Meeting the Needs of the Gifted Chemistry Learner: Providing Intellectual Challenge to Engage Students in Enjoyable Learning - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 140

2.6 The Importance of Metacognition in Experiencing
Learning

It seems then that there are strong links between the cognitive and affective
domains. Another area or domain of importance is metacognition, which relates
to the ability of a person to be aware of, monitor and control their own cognitive
functioning (Whitebread & Pino-Pasternak, 2010 ). Metacognitive development is
related to the ability to become a

learner, something that facilitates
a commonly recognised educational aim of developing

self-regulated

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learners
(Meyer, Haywood, Sachdev, & Faraday, 2008 ). White and Mitchell ( 1994 ) argued
that a focus on developing learners

independent

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metacognition could contribute to both
supporting desired conceptual change and improving learners

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attitudes to science
learning. Research supports links between cognitive, metacognitive and affective
factors in learning. For example, Aydin, Uzuntiryaki and Demird¨˘en ( 2010 ) used
structural equation monitoring to explore a model relating self-efficacy, anxiety,
task value, cognitive strategies and metacognitive self-regulation. Among their
sample of Turkish students who were studying or had studied some chemistry at
university level, they found that

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as students realise the value of the academic task
and get intrinsically motivated, they are more likely to utilise higher order strategies
leading to meaningful learning

'

(pp. 63-64).
One approach to conceptualising the links between the metacognitive and other
domains is represented in Fig. 2 . This suggests that metacognitive development
potentially links with cognitive development (which provides the basic cognitive
skills to support metacognitive faculties and which can potentially be monitored
metacognitively), conceptual development (as understanding of concepts can be
monitored and evaluated, i.e. metacognitively) and affective development (as the
development, application and systematicity/coherence of the individual

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s values

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can be monitored and evaluated).
Metacognition may, for example, be important in allowing learners to stand

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back from their ideas and beliefs and so, for example, appreciate the limitations of

their alternative conceptions. The highest level of affective development
(Krathwohl et al., 1968 ) involves acquiring a coherent set of values that can be
applied systematically in life. Educational institutions would normally seek to
guide learners on the values that should be adopted (e.g. fairness, compassion,
etc.), and this might be considered to be more the remit of moral education or best
facilitated by studying the humanities. However, science education certainly offers
target values that it hopes learners will adopt into their personal value system, for
example, values relating to the importance of evidence, objectivity, seeking con-
sistency and being critical. Arguably such

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values are not always those
that should take precedence in all contexts (e.g. there are occasions when it is more
important to offer emotional support to a friend in distress than to seek to offer a
critical objective analysis of their situation), but at the highest levels of the
taxonomy of educational objectives in the affective domain, the individual has
developed a system of values that allows judgements to be made about which

scientific

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