Students’ Metacognitive Knowledge about the Use of Reading Strategies Trained by Peer-Led Discussions

Abstract

Reading comprehension processes involve forming connections between the text and relevant prior knowledge (Kintsch, 1988). To reach this goal, students can use reading strategies and their metacognitive knowledge (Pintrich, 2002; SLO, 2018). In peer-led discussions, students have the opportunity to gain more metacognitive knowledge about reading strategies, because they interact about their interpretations with other students (Gambrell, 2004). This study assessed students’ individual reading approaches before and after the peer-led discussions by observing talk-aloud protocols. Six students participated in the peer-led discussions and five classroom peers acted as a control group. The results, both before and after the intervention, showed that all students used higher order metacognitive activities in the taxonomy of Meijer et al. (2006). Students who participated actively in the peer-led discussions were also more certain of their answers to reading questions and they used longer sentences in the post-observations. The results implicate that students who actively talk about their approach with other peers show more metacognitive knowledge. It is therefore recommended for teachers to be aware of the profit peer-led discussions can have on the metacognitive knowledge of their students about the use of reading strategies.