The effect of turkish students’ motivational beliefs on their metacognitive self-regulation in Physics

The main purpose of the present study was to determine the Turkish introductory physics course students’ metacognitive self-regulation in physics, learning and performance goal orientations and physics self-efficacy levels. Besides, the effects of students’ goal orientations and physics self-efficacy scores on their metacognitive self-regulation in physics were also investigated.

The results of the study shows that students taking introductory physics have high level use of metacognitive strategy in physics, learning goal orientations, and physics self-efficacy beliefs. However, their performance goal orientations were found to be at a moderate level. Students’ high metacognitive self-regulation in physics levels reflect that they use strategies to control and regulate their cognitive processes, i.e. they plan, monitor, and review their own learning processes and make an effort where needed. The high learning goal orientation level of students taking introductory physics course shows that these students have a high level of desire to learn. Similarly, the high physics self-efficacy belief levels of the students show that they have high beliefs in that they can successfully accomplish the task or problem regarding the physics topic to be learned no matter how difficult it is. However, the moderate level of these students’ performance goal orientations shows that their desire to get high grades in physics classes is at a moderate level.

Another result of the study revealed that there was a moderate, positive, and significant correlation between introductory physics students’ use of metacognitive self-regulation in physics and learning goal orientation and a low, positive, and significant correlation between the use of metacognitive self-regulation in physics and physics self-efficacy belief. Similarly, in several studies positive correlations were found between learning goal orientation and use of metacognitive strategies (Somuncuoglu & Yildirim, 1999, Sungur, 2007). Pajares and Shunk (2001) stated that metacognitive self-regulation was a construct related to self-efficacy belief. These studies support the results of the present study.

Furthermore, a low, positive, and significant correlation was found between physics self-efficacy belief and learning goal orientation and a low, negative but significant correlation was determined between physics self-efficacy belief and performance goal orientation. This result shows that students whose goal is only to learn physics rather than to be praised by others or to be more successful will also have a high belief in that they can successfully accomplish a physics task or problem no matter how difficult it is. Similarly, it was stated in several studies that learning goal orientation has a positive relationship with self-efficacy and perception of academic ability (Wolters, 2004; Midgley et al. 1998).

According to the results of the stepwise regression analysis conducted in this study, it was determined that learning goal orientation and physics self-efficacy had a significant effect on Turkish introductory physics students’ metacognitive self-regulation in physics. Schunk (1995) reported that goals related to learning are effective on self-efficacy and self-regulation, but on the other hand performance goals could also create strong motivational effects. Coutinho (2007) found that metacognitive strategy use had a high correlation with learning goal orientation but a low correlation with performance goal orientation and also emphasized that according to the result of the regression analysis, learning goal orientation was an effective factor on metacognition whereas performance goal orientation was not found to be effective. Furthermore, Coutinho (2008) stated that students who effectively used metacognitive strategies would also have high beliefs in that they can successfully accomplish a task. These results show that students can better metacognitivelly self-regulate their own learning in introductory physics classes when they focus on learning and understanding physics and developing their own competence in physics rather than focusing on getting high grades and being praised by their peers or environment. For this reason, it is suggested that instructors who teach these courses should create more interactive and learning oriented environments where the active participation of students is maintained through methodologies like cooperative learning and peer interaction. For this purpose, instructors can include more research assignments and projects in their courses and encourage students to participate in activities like physics groups, seminars and symposiums in order that the motivational beliefs of students are more learning oriented. Furthermore, since self-regulation skills are considered to be learnable and improvable (Zimmerman & Schunk 2011), academicians can observe the students’ perceptions and motivations in their physics classes and provide them with environments in which they can be active in the learning process and assess their own learning (Üredi & Üredi, 2007). Moreover, researchers could conduct developmental studies in order to understand changes in students motivational beliefs and use of metacognitive self regulation strategies.