Research of the relationship between university students` cognitive and metacognitive self regulation strategies and their mathematics achievement according to gender

ABSTRACT RESEARCH OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' COGNITIVE AND METACOGNITIVE SELF REGULATION STRATEGIES AND THEIR MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT ACCORDING TO GENDER An important part of the factors that affect achievement come together under the title of "learning strategies based on self regulation". In this research; rehearsal, elaboration, organization, critical thinking, and metacognitive self regulation are considered and differences at the variables according to gender are investigated. The study group consisted of 106 Yıldız Technical University Mathematics Department students (61 girls and 45 boys) who attended the "Calculus II" course in the Spring Semester of 2004-2005 academic year. In this relational type of research, while "Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire" developed by Pintrich et al. (1991) is used for the purpose of determining students' learning strategies based on self regulation, students' term point averages are taken as the mathematics achievement scores. Findings introduce that although cognitive and metacognitive learnings strategies based on self regulation do not solely have a significant effect on mathematics achievement, they do have a significant effect when used together. Furthermore, it is revealed that there is a significant effect of elaboration, organization, critical thinking, and metacognitive self regulation together on mathematics achievement for the girls but there is not such an effect for the boys. Keywords: Self regulation, achievement, gender, cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies.