Comparison of the Effects of Metacognition Instruction, Voices of Role Models, and the Synergy of the Interventions on Students’ Achievement Scores and Perceived Belonging in a General Chemistry Course

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Teaching students metacognition, the awareness of what they know and how they know it, and integrating role models in STEM courses have been shown to improve performance scores and students’ learning experiences in college classrooms. Importantly, students’ sense of belonging to their domains of study is critical for progression into STEM programs and careers. However, there are limited comparative studies, if any, that have investigated the effects of metacognition instruction versus exposing students to role models─people they can emulate, on students’ achievement scores and perceived belongingness in postsecondary chemistry education. The current experimental study investigated the effects of three treatment conditions, namely: voices of role models in STEM (Condition 1), metacognition instruction (Condition 2), and the two combined approaches (Condition 3), on General Chemistry I students’ achievement scores and perceived general belongingness. Additionally, we investigated the relationship between the averaged belonging scores and the final exam scores. A 5-point Likert-scaled belonging survey was utilized to measure belongingness and exam scores to measure the achievement variable. The treatment conditions were implemented after the course participants completed Exam 1. One-way ANCOVA results showed that when controlling for exam 1 score, statistically significant differences between the treatment conditions were evident on the final exam only, with a small effect size (η_p² = 0.031). Posthoc tests revealed participants in the “combined” treatment conditions performed significantly better than those in the role models condition. The estimated marginal means showed that although participants assigned to Condition 1 performed significantly better than those in Conditions 2 and 3 prior to the implementation of the interventions, the opportunity gaps in the achievement scores were closed in the final cumulative exam. One-way ANOVA showed nonsignificant differences in mean rating scores among the three treatment conditions on the reported belonging (p > 0.05). However, the Pearson correlation showed the final exam score increased with the increase in the belonging score. Belonging explained 9.5% of the final exam for the entire study sample and 11.4% for Condition 3 (medium correlations), about 25.3% for Condition 2 (strong correlation), and 0.9% for Condition 1 (weak correlation). These results emphasize the importance of metacognition instruction and the need to blend it with inclusive teaching practices in General Chemistry classrooms.