Being learners with mental resilience as outcomes of metacognitive strategies in an academic context

Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is twofold; firstly, to analyse the relationship between metacognitive strategies and learning performance. Secondly, a new mediator is proposed, namely digital literacy. Mental resilience is an omnitemporal skill that enables individuals to gain resilience thinking to successfully adapt to life tasks. Although Researchers accentuate that metacognitive competency is necessary and crucial in enhancing mental resilience, research on inculcating resilience thinking through metacognitive skills is still undeveloped and warrants the urgent attention of the research community. Data was gathered from a cross-sectional study of 563 university students. To accomplish the goals of the research, data were analysed empirically utilising the variance-based partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique. The results revealed that learning performance was not significantly directly impacted by metacognition. This may be due to the fact that metacognitive strategies are used to help students to increase academic performance as opposed to learning capacity. However, through the mediation analysis, it was discovered that digital literacy was proven to be an effective mediator to promote learning performance. These new insights can assist academics to reflect and evaluate current practices to cultivate metacognitive practices in the classroom without having to alter the subject curriculum.

Keywords:

• Metacognitive strategies
• learning performance
• digital literacy
• mental resilience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2023.2219497.