Exploring lecturers’ attitudes towards the concept of metacognitive awareness: a qualitative comparative case

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Dėstytojai; Iraniečiai; Lektoriai; Lietuviai; Metakognityvinis suvokimas; Metakognityvus supratimas; Požiūris; Studijos universitete; Universitetinės studijos; Attitudes; Iranians; Lecturers; Lithuanians; Metacognitive awareness; University studies.

ENPurpose – The main purpose of this cross-cultural comparison study was to look at exploring lecturers' definitions and attitudes towards the concept of metacognitive awareness in university studies. Design/methodology/approach – To explore the participants’ general understanding of the construct of metacognition, the participants, ten female lecturers from Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius and ten female lecturers from Azad University in Tehran all majoring in education or philology in the English Department, were asked an open-ended question, “What is metacognitive awareness?” This question determined if the participant had enough familiarity with the concept to be able to define it appropriately. The collected data was submitted to both inductive and deductive qualitative content analysis developed by Krippendof (2013) which is a recursive process in which the data was reviewed to determine the major themes by the researcher and three raters. Finding – Through both deductive and inductive qualitative content analysis of the responses, three main themes of “cognitive”, “strategic” and “affective” emerged from the lecturers’ definitions for the concept of metacognitive awareness. Participants in both groups considered this concept mostly cognitive and then strategic. The Lithuanian research participants did not mention anything about the affective meaning of metacognitive awareness, while a few Iranian participants’ responses were categorized under this theme. Research limitations/implications – The first limitation is that the study did not address the actual lecturers’ employment of metacognitive strategies during teaching. Prolonged and in-depth class observation and triangulation of data from various sources which are gathered through different types of tools of measurement are needed.A further limitation is that the number of lecturers was limited to one university in Tehran and one university in Vilnius, so it is not possible to overgeneralize the outcomes to the universities of other cities. Practical implications – The findings contribute to the enhancement of lecturers’ pedagogical knowledge regarding the concept of metacognitive awareness and arrangement of future metacognitive awareness programs for lecturers with considering the benefits of focusing on emotional and motivational factors of learning further to strategic and cognitive dimensions. Originality/value – Although studying metacognitive awareness at universities is becoming a more and more significant concept, there can found a little research on exploring lecturers' attitudes towards the meaning of metacognitive awareness globally. Thus, the study is new and unique because no research has compared and contrasted lecturers' attitudes towards this concept in Lithuanian and Iranian settings. [From the publication]

• Metakognityvinių gebėjimų ugdymas socialinio ugdymo pamokose / Vitalija Čepaitė, Romas Prakapas. Socialinis darbas. 2012, t. 11, Nr. 2, p. 433-442.
• Mokymo(si) proceso universitete įtaka būsimųjų užsienio kalbų mokytojų dorinių nuostatų plėtotei / Roma Kriaučiūnienė. Pedagogika. 2010, 98, p. 18-28.
• Raising students' awareness in language learning / Ilona Rinkevičienė, Jūratė Zdanytė. Kalbų studijos. 2002, Nr. 3, p. 96-100.
• Teksto supratimo gebėjimų ugdymas ir skaitymo motyvacijos stiprinimas mokant(is) metakognityvinių skaitymo strategijų heterogeninėje klasėje : disertacija / Rita Melienė. Šiauliai, 2008. 154, [1] p.