Abstract:

Education is one of the basic pillars of society; therefore the training of future teachers for the teaching profession is of particular importance. That is why the Faculty of Teacher Education in Belgrade (Serbia) pays special attention to the creation of the curriculum, guided by the needs of students and the development of the competencies required for this profession. Considering the contribution of the designed studies of the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Belgrade - major in teacher education, the paper presents the results of a longitudinal study on students’ metacognitive abilities. This paper aims to longitudinally monitor and analyze the differences in the metacognitive abilities of the students of the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Belgrade. Monitoring was carried out during two school years. The Metacognitive Awareness Inventory was used as an instrument, which contained two main cognitive levels: knowledge and regulation. Knowledge about cognition consists of three parts: declarative, procedural, and conditional; while regulation of cognition consists of, also, three parts: comprehension monitoring, information management strategies, debugging strategies, and evaluation. The research results show that there is a statistically significant difference for the total value of metacognition, t (104) = 3.567, p < .001, as well as for declarative and procedural knowledge, planning, comprehension monitoring, and evaluation. Metacognition represents an active process of knowledge, that is, awareness of one's cognitive state with the ability to perform a given task and apply an appropriate learning strategy. Therefore, the obtained result shows that the concept of the study program is constructed in such a way as to raise the metacognitive abilities of students, that is, it enables students to develop an awareness of their knowledge and applied strategies, as well as their effectiveness. Through their initial education, students are trained to continuously develop and monitor their learning strategies based on their evolving self-knowledge, which is particularly important from the point of view of the need for continuous education.

Keywords:

Metacognitive abilities, future teachers, longitudinal study, teacher education.