Does Metacognitive Reflection Benefit Art Students?

Abstract

The study of art, especially perspective, involves the use of specialized vocabulary words which can be difficult to learn. Metacognitive reflection (MR) offers a method to improve student learning of academic language. Teacher feedback on students’ reflections provides additional benefits. This quasi-experimental study measured the influence of MR and teacher feedback on students’ ability to learn and retain academic language. This study was conducted three separate times, to improve validity. While the MR treatment groups attained and maintained greater mean gains overall, post-hoc tests revealed that differences between groups in two of three studies were not statistically significant. The groups who engaged in reflection with feedback added a weighted mean gain of d = .37 to their posttest score beyond that of the comparison groups. This finding provides moderate evidence for the efficacy of practicing reflection with feedback.