Young children's metacognitive processes in a variety of challenging number tasks

Abstract

Based on a fluid approach to metacognition in real-time situations, young children's communication and regulation of their own numerical cognition was investigated. Sixty school children (20 in each of the following years: K4, K5 and Y1) participated in an individual interview which integrated a variety of multimodal number tasks with open-ended questions and requirements. A situated, in-depth qualitative analysis of childrens verbal, gestural and graphic participation and productions was conducted. Results firstly provide a fine-grained repertoire of numerical metacognitive processes: fifteen indicators regard communicating the own number activity, and other fifteen regard regulating it. Next, results delve into the dynamics of those multiple metacognitive processes in the domain of number, in terms of four statements. We state that: i) children deployed metacognitive processes both when they exhibited conventional number knowledge and when they displayed partial or idiosyncratic approximations; ii) the metacognitive processes deployed varied across number tasks that entail different affordances and challenges; iii) communication and regulation of the own cognitive activity were intertwined; iv) prospective, ongoing and retrospective temporal frames formed a continuous flow. The dynamics captured by each statement is illustrated with excerpts from childrens interviews. These findings may contribute to teachers, administrators and researchers understanding of early number development as a reflective and self-regulated process and, hopefully, may highlight the importance of promoting young learners agency in mathematics learning.