Analysing synergies between assessment and metacognitive knowledge : case studies of three award-winning university teachers' design and implementation of assessment in Hong Kong

Abstract

This thesis sets out to explore the relationship between assessment and metacognitive knowledge (MK) in one Hong Kong university setting. It examines how assessment stimulates student learning dispositions, through a metacognitive lens. This study closely examines the assessment task designs and implementation of three teacher educators, who were recipients of awards for teaching excellence in a prestigious university in Hong Kong. The study seeks to achieve three goals: to explore teachers’ perceived relevance between assessment and MK; to reveal the connections between assessment task design and MK; and to analyse approaches that metacognitively engage students with the nature of quality.

This study adopts a multiple-case qualitative design. Data were collected from a variety of sources, including classroom observation, interviews (think-aloud protocols, stimulated recall, semi-structured interviews), and documents (Moodle posts, Facebook and Google Site interactions, teaching plans, worksheets, written self-reflections, and written feedback). This study adopted the software NVivo as an analytical tool, to help with organising and analysing the data. Data analysis generally followed the qualitative analysis protocols established by Miles and Huberman (1994).

The findings show integration was manifested, in different ways, between the understanding of metacognition and beliefs of assessment across the three case teachers. An examination was made of metacognitively-rich assessment task designs, focusing on nested tasks and web-based collaboration design. Four features of nested task design were identified, in relation to their impact on student-teachers’ MK: revisiting of key learning outcomes; incremental difficulty; sustainable feedback; and explicitness of task connection. Activation of self-knowledge was found to be an important indicator of metacognitive engagement in web-based collaboration. Perceptual gaps were detected between teacher educators and their students regarding the extent of engagement. Several recurring themes emerged from the discussion of task design, including authenticity, student choice, and assessing online participation.

Three approaches were identified to metacognitively engage student-teachers in understanding the nature of quality: teachers setting themselves as models for teaching; offering opportunities for reciprocal peer learning; and use of exemplars. Teacher modelling was crucial to fostering students’ declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge of strategy. A two-layer modelling, involving two cycles of alignment of the teaching process and content of learning, was found to be critical to activating student-teachers’ sense of their dual roles in relation to self, task, and strategic knowledge. Reciprocal peer learning activities promoted a high level of intra- and inter- individual knowledge of self. The use of exemplars were effective in enchancing students’ knowledge of task demands, structure and purpose

The main significance of the study resides in three areas: contribution to theories bringing together assessment and metacognition; pedagogical insights into the design and implementation of assessment to promote students’ MK; and the use of a qualitative approach in investigating real-life processes of MK. The various features and pedagogical practices that emerged from the specific setting may carry resonance for researchers and teacher-educators interested in the issue of developing student-teachers’ MK in similar contexts. The scope for interweaving metacognition, assessment, and learning is also something teachers beyond teacher education might strive to emulate.