Teaching Metacognitive Skills in Teacher Education

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impacts of teaching metacognitive skills to teacher-students at Farhangian Teacher Training University.
The study was a semi-experimental using pre-test and post-test on two experimental and control groups of students. Using a questionnaire with 70 items, and ɑ=0.94, the meta-cognitive skills of both groups were evaluated. Both experimental and control groups were composed of 12 fifth-semester students at Farhangian Teacher Training University. After assessment of metacognitive skills of all students, the experimental group participated in 8 sessions of metacognitive skills training, and then both groups were tested again.
As a result, the metacognitive skills of the experimental group was improved, compared to the control group. Metacognitive skills training had an impact of ƞ2=0.360. Reviewing the changes, the three components of metacognitive skills were analyzed as follows:The cognitive knowledge of the experimental group was improved compared to the control group with an impact of ƞ2=0.327 which was significant at ɑ=0.01.
The cognitive regulation of the experimental group compared to the control group was improved with an impact of ƞ2=0.296 which was significant at ɑ=0.01.
Although the average score of cognitive beliefs was higher in the experimental group compared to the control group, the impact of metacognitive skills training on cognitive beliefs of students was not significant.
The results showed that meta-cognitive skills training can lead to improved metacognitive skills, particularly to cognitive knowledge and cognitive regulation.