LEARNING TO LEARN
much they need to do to improve, with the potential
to track progress. Conversely, female students liked not
having a grade, they believed this lessened stress levels
by reducing competition in class and made them focus
more on the feedback and assessment criteria. Students
praised the provision of marking criteria and found it
incredibly useful to see exactly what they needed to
do for an assessment. Interestingly, they viewed their
involvement in the creation of assessment criteria as
a waste of time, as they could be getting on with the
assessed piece of work instead.
The students viewed spending class time on DIRT as
pointless, stating they were simply reiterating points
the teacher had already made. They naturally review
feedback, undertake self-assessment, and think about
how to improve anyway. Students who volunteered for
the focus group are all high achieving, self-motivated
students who are perhaps more likely to do this than
lower ability students (and therefore this might be an
anomaly). When asked whether different teachers or
departments having different approaches to feedback
was difficult, students did not perceive this as a problem,
as long as feedback was clear and consistent students
could manage different feedback mechanisms.
LASSI results
The t-test looking at boys and girls mean scores revealed
that there was no significant difference between boys’
and girls’ overall scores in LASSI-1 or LASSI-2, nor in any
individual metacognition components, apart from the
use of study aids in which girls performed significantly
better than boys (boys mean score of 20.93 (standard
deviation (SD) of 4.72) and girls 24.22 (SD of 5.03)
in LASSI-1 leading to p = 0.003, and boys 20.37 (SD
5.06) and girls 24.16 (SD 5.01) leading to p = 0.001 in
LASSI-2). It could be said that boys should therefore
be encouraged more to utilise study aids in their work,
though the results are not statistically significant enough
to conclude that boys should be given more support
in this area and again this would need confirming via
another study.
Interestingly, the t-test also demonstrated that there
was a significant difference in anxiety levels between
boys and girls in LASSI-2 (boys mean score of 30.08
(SD 7.54) and girls 22.43 (SD 7.37) leading to a p-value
of <0.005) with boys performing better than girls.
Although boys had performed better than girls in
LASSI-1 (boys 27.38 (SD 7.45 and girls 24.43 (SD 6.87)
this was not significant at the 5% level (p = 0.066)
suggesting girls’ anxiety had got worse throughout
the academic year. This was investigated further using
a paired t-test and it was found that boys performed
significantly better in dealing with anxiety between
LASSI-1 and LASSI-2 (p = 0.007) while girls showed
no significant difference (p = 0.072). Hence, although
girls’ ability to cope with anxiety had got worse as the
year progressed, this was not significant at the 5% level
(though it did approach statistical significance) and the
reason for the gap widening was down to boys coping
better in this instance.
When using a t-test to analyse LASSI components
longitudinally between LASSI-1 and LASSI-2 there
is no significant difference at the 5% level between
component scores, suggesting that the intervention
strategy had no impact upon students’ metacognitive
abilities. Despite this, in the intervention group the two
biggest changes approaching statistical significance
over time were in attitude (p = 0.074) and test
strategies (p = 0.089). It could be inferred that the DIRT
approach did have some impact on these components
of metacognition, though the result is not significant
enough to firmly draw this conclusion and students
would be exposed to many other feedback methods in
the school which could have affected this. In addition,
multivariate linear regression analysis demonstrates that
LASSI-2 scores were not affected by whether a student
was in the intervention or control group, further giving
evidence that the DIRT template intervention did not
have an impact.
The multivariate linear regression analysis gives further
evidence to the t-test results for differences between
boys and girls, as gender was found to significantly
affect LASSI-2 scores in anxiety, attitude, concentration,
information processing, motivation, and time
management, as well as the total LASSI-2 score. Beta
coefficients at 95% confidence intervals demonstrate
that girls’ scores are less than boys’ scores after
adjusting for the effect of LASSI-1 total scores, whether
the student was in the intervention or control group,
nationality, age, and distance from school. The largest
effect for a single metacognition component was the
adverse effect on anxiety (β = -7.656 with a p value of
<0.005). This is in contrast to the focus group indicators
with respect to anxiety.
It was also found that distance from school significantly
affected LASSI-2 scores in anxiety, selecting main ideas,
and time management, alongside the total LASSI-2 score
with increased distance leading to a higher component
score. For example, for each additional mile away from
school, the anxiety score increased by 0.181
(p = 0.010). However, the magnitude of this effect
is very small and far less influential than gender.
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