INSTRUMENTO DE RECOLECCIÓN DE LA INFORMACIÓN

Teachers need to be aware that the metacognitive approach can be seen as hard work for many students, particularly when it is implemented in a learning environment where the demand of the curriculum on content learning and testing is high.

In the Primary School Teacher Education Study Program in our university, students have to take around 10 to 12 different subjects each semester with English as just one of these. As there is no coordination between lecturers about assignment due dates, it may happen that students have to submit many assignments in one week.

In part due to these many demands on their time, some students initially viewed the metacognitive approach as adding an additional burden for them. This was compounded by the encouraging of students to pursue learning experiences outside the class, independent of teacher direction and supervision—an additional expectation which they may have viewed as beyond the scope of a two-credit subject.

However, the metacognitive approach assisted students to become more empowered in that they had the freedom and autonomy to determine what and how they learnt, based on an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses in English language learning. This freedom and autonomy enabled the students to take charge of their learning; to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning, to use strategies, and monitor and regulate their affects in order to reach their learning goals (see chapter 5).

Speaking of the Malaysian context, Thang et al. (2011, p. 459) found that high respect for teachers (a characteristic which is not dissimilar to the Indonesian context) played a vital role in influencing students’ attributions, leading to a dominance of external

attribution. However, in contrast, most of the students in this research developed the ability to attribute their success and failures to internal factors such as efforts and strategies (see section 5.1.5) and demonstrated the capacity to learn from their experiences rather than blaming internal factors as the cause of their failures such as the case with the findings of Thang et al. (2011). They were able to focus on what it was that they wanted to learn and how to learn it. They were learning to regulate their affective responses and their strategies in order to maximise learning and enhance the chances of experiencing learning success, despite the pressure to deal with many learning demands in the curriculum. In line with the finding of a study on learning autonomy of Indonesian students (Lamb, 2004b), and despite the emphasis on teacher directed and dependent learning approaches students would have experienced in their previous schooling (see, for example, Lamb, 2004b; Marcellino, 2008) this study found that Indonesian learners demonstrated a willingness and ability to learn independent of teachers’ prescriptions, directions and supervision. This is consistent with Boekaerts and Corno (2005, p. 201) who argue that self-regulated learners actively and constructively adapt their thoughts, feeling, and actions as needed to affect their learning and motivation.

Through the reflective process, and stimulated by the ideas and discussions within class, students were prompted to recognise that the road to success may not always be easy; that regardless of the efforts and strategies they put into learning they might have to face learning failures. Rather than displaying learned helplessness, these students were empowered to re-engage in the learning process, as indicated by increased intrinsic motivation to succeed (as described by Thomas & Velthouse, cited in Campbell & Martinko, 1998, p. 173). The supportive environment provided by the focus on metacognitive elements of learning enabled students to view these experiences more positively and regulate themselves, the strategies, and the environment in order to allow a greater chance for future learning success to happen. While focusing on future learning goals, the students realised the importance of regulating their day-to-day learning in order for them to begin to enjoy every-day learning success, even if the success was small. It was the capacity to embrace and learn from those experiences that indicated that the students were becoming self- regulated.

Evidence that the students were becoming more empowered in directing their learning is provided by the variety of learning activities they pursued, both individually and in groups, independent of their teachers. They read similar articles in Indonesian and then in English to provide the background/contextual knowledge; they read comic books on the internet; they engaged in more reading in order to improve their vocabulary size. They watched news on television in Indonesian and then English to improve listening, vocabulary and pronunciation; they downloaded and listened to the songs, while at the same time writing out the lyrics; and they watched English movies. Students formed English speaking groups in which they could practise their English; informally, they practised their English with tourists and chatted with their friends in English through Face-book. They tried to write their reflections in English even, if at times, they had to combine it with some Indonesian. They studied grammar in order to increase their understanding of English, particularly when reading English articles. Other novel ideas which students came up with included practising English in front of the mirror in order to boost their confidence when speaking and translating texts from Indonesian into English and vice versa to boost their confidence and increase their understanding of the language.

However, a greater indication of their being more empowered is that the students changed attitudes towards English. This was indicated by the students’ willingness to pro-actively change their personal environment to be more conducive to English language learning. At one level this might include changing their place of study to a quiet location so that they could concentrate on learning and avoid distraction from their friends. However, actions such as decorating their rooms with English language resources and changing the setting of their mobile phones from Indonesian into English evidenced more profound proactive efforts to expose themselves more to English.

These outcomes confirmed Zimmerman’s (1994) observation that students would be able to self-regulate their motivation and their academic functioning when they were not externally compelled to learn and were given choice of preferred learning methods, such as having the opportunity to work at their own pace and choose or control their physical and social environment.

In this research, students were encouraged to experiment with their own ideas about English language learning and this broadened their repertoire of strategies and approaches to learning. Sharing their learning experiences with their fellow students at the beginning of weekly classes provided opportunity for these ideas to diffuse from student to student, again lessening the centrality of the teacher. Teachers were also exposed to less conventional teaching approaches, thus providing them with a repertoire they could pass on to future cohorts.