Thesis

The Use of Metacognition to Aid Mathematical Problem Solving: A Descriptive Study

By Matthew Natale

Abstract

Over the course of an eight-week period, thirty students participated in this descriptive study to determine if there was a significant correlation between students’ mathematical word problem-solving and their metacognitive skills.  Each student in a middle-class town in the northeast took a ten-question mathematical word problem test to assess his or her ability to successfully solve word problems aligned with the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards.  Subsequently, each student met with the primary investigator for fifteen minutes to solve a single mathematical word problem while communicating his or her thought processes aloud.  Each student was scored based on a metacognitive rubric.  A statistically significant correlation between metacognition scores and word problem-solving scores was found. 

Thesis Presentation 

(copies of this thesis are available upon request)