Abstract:

The need to promote change in higher education systems is a widely addressed, discussed and recognized topic. This is evident in the permanent search for innovative pedagogical strategies, whose common denominator is to recognize the student as the central protagonist of the learning process. In this way, the purpose of promoting the active participation of the student as well as the development of competences and skills for self-learning, communication, creative and critical analysis, independent reflection and teamwork have been incorporated into the different university educational models. The pursuit of these objectives has led to an explosion of proposals for curricular and methodological reforms, with different levels of success and impact. In this sense, there is no doubt that motivational and emotional aspects play a critical role in the process and in the achievements achieved. The success assessment of a pedagogical innovation usually addresses, as one of the fundamental variables, the level of achievement in student motivation, since it directly influences the development of cognitive and metacognitive skills. However, what happens to those students whose performance was not successful in the learning process is not very often addressed. The purpose of this work was to compare the profile of two groups of students in terms of their achievement motivation, through the application of the Modified Achievement Motivation Scale (EAML-M); their metacognitive skills (through the application of Metacognitive Activities Inventory (MCAi) and their attitude about chemistry learning, through the application of Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) for use in Chemistry. Both groups were freshmen students of Science and engineering in a Peruvian university, they were enrolled in a general chemistry course in which the pedagogical strategy was the development of collaborative activities in working groups throughout the semester. One of the groups included students who took the course for the first time, with an average academic performance of 74.15%. The second group included students who have been failed the course before and took it a second time, their average academic performance was 89.52%. The results showed significant differences in achievement motivation profile between the groups. The best performing group gave the greatest attribution to collaborative interaction with peers, while the second group highlighted the attribution to interaction with the teacher. There were no significant differences in the assessment of metacognitive skills between the groups. In the case of attitudes towards chemistry learning, the second group showed differences in the dimensions related to beliefs about conceptual learning and problem solving, as well as in those that link the sense of learning and the effort invested by the student. These results are important contributions to the improvement of the pedagogical strategies implemented, so that expectations of academic success could be broadened.

Keywords:

achievement motivation, metacognition, learning attitudes, assessment