ABSTRACT

The study explores metacognition in young children of 3-6 years old. It presents finding from a studyexploring the development of self-regulatory and metacognitive abilities in young children. The studytakes the form of a descriptive, interpretative investigation using both quantitative and qualitativeresearch methods. It involved 60 children in a local kindergarten in Hong Kong to participate in threedifferent activities. Children participated in the activities were either done without any helped or withsome forms of support. The first two activities were conducted two times, children needed to finish thetask on their own the first time and with help the second time. For the third activity, the children weredivided into a control and an experimental group while the control group needed to finish the task ontheir own and support was provided to the experimental group. In the first two activities quantitative datawas collected according to the correct amount of items children were able to remember and in the thirdactivity, a score was given to each child based on their metacognitive ability using the rubrics fromProject Spectrum as reference. Qualitative data was collected in all three activities based on theirbehavioural performance in each activity that was video-taped. The findings showed children in age 3-6years old have a certain sense of metacognition and the older the children the more traits ofmetacognitive ability can be seen during the tasks. Furthermore, in a meaningful task with differentexternal factors provided, children were able to perform better.

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