DEVELOPING AN INSTRUMENT TO ASSESS STUDENTS’ STRATEGIC BEHAVIOUR DURING PROBLEM SOLVING

Literature on students’ metacognition and self-regulated learning emphasizes strategic action during learning and problem solving. Mastering and applying multiple strategies to effectively monitor and regulate learning and problem solving are essential components of self-regulated learning and they are critical for successful performance. The aim of this paper was to present an instrument developed to record students’ strategic activity during problem solving. The instrument is called Strategic Behaviour Observation Scale (SBOS) and it is individually administered and scored. A series of research projects implemented by the author and collaborators resulted in developing and proposing such an instrument. Students from kindergarten to 3rd grade and students from mainstream and special education participated in these research projects. A common methodological rationale underlying these projects was the following. Each student was individually examined on selected cognitive tasks during regular school hours while at the same time his/her efforts to solve the task at hand were video-recorded. The participant students of the research projects described in this paper were administered tasks from different cognitive domains. For example, a series of construction tasks requiring arithmetic and spatial analytic abilities was administered within one research project while during another project a series of reading comprehension tasks was administered to the students. After individual examination, two independent observers filled in the SBOS for each student separately based on the video-records. Twelve different strategic behaviours that are characteristic of self-regulation of task-related activities were rated during each student’s engagement with the task at hand. Specifically, the strategic behaviours included in the SBOS tapped cognitive strategic behaviours, such as choosing between main and trivial information concerning the task, metacognitive strategic behaviours, such as behaviours indicative of planning and self-monitoring of the problem-solving procedure, and motivational/volitional strategic behaviours during problem solving, such as behaviours indicating effort to maintain self-motivation towards the task at hand. In general, the criteria for scoring were based on the frequency of employing the examined strategic behaviours but also on the behaviours’ qualitative description. The results showed that SBOS has got structural validity, internal consistency and inter-rater reliability. Moreover, across the research projects it has been shown that cognitive and metacognitive strategic behaviour was closely related to the students’ respective performance. The instrument’s usefulness in assessing students’ actual, ongoing strategic behaviour during task engagement is discussed within the general frame of self-regulated learning.