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Abstract
This study aims to further our understanding of metalearning activity through the analysis of qualitative data gathered from 370 first‐year microeconomics students in three UK universities. The students were asked to produce undirected reflective essays in response to a personal ‘learning profile’ generated before, and after, the teaching of a threshold concept. The purpose was to compare the capacity and/or inclination of students studying threshold concepts to write about their learning in a manner that conveys an understanding of the self, and sense of control, in the associated process. Findings are first, that as a posited benefit of the metalearning experience a majority of students demonstrate an increased level of control over their learning of threshold concepts, and second that the metalearning activity may provide the basis for study support intervention, tailored to the individual student's needs as identified in their self‐reported learning profile and reflective essay.
Notes
1. Simply put, these conditions represent aspects of learning that conceptually inhibit, rather than support, deep‐level, integrative learning. In particular the foregrounding of inhibitive aspects in the presence of supporting aspects of such learning is conceptually problematic. Such ‘mixed conditions’ have been separately modelled in various empirical studies under the label of dissonance.
2. The RoLI domain contains 16 observables, five of which (in terms of high scores) are conceptually designated as interference conditions: detail related process, fragmentation, memorising as rehearsal, fact‐based learning, knowledge discrete and factual. For a fuller discussion see Meyer (Citation2004).
3. There are three observables in the RoLI domain that may triangulate in students' minds what is simply referred to here as ‘rote learning’: memorising as rehearsal, re‐reading a text, memorise before understanding.