Abstract:

The article focuses on the field of reading comprehension and metacognitive knowledge. Working as a stable part of metacognition, the development of metacognitive knowledge starts earlier compared to the metacognitive regulation. Therefore, metacognitive knowledge is the starting point for considering the relative effectiveness of the strategy in relation to
(a) the learner,
(b) task requirements and
(c) other strategies available through declarative memory.

Metacognitive knowledge enables to explore a wide scale of strategic tools towards applying adaptive and flexible strategies, even under completely new and still unknown conditions. The main objective of the metacognitive knowledge research was to discover whether the type of educational programme and relating strategies provide impact on the level of learner´s metacognitive knowledge. Differences were expected in work with text (particularly in reading comprehension). The research methodology followed the quasi-experimental design with total amount of 824 learners; 699 learners attended general primary schools, 125 of them were educated in schools implementing the Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking (RWCT) programme. The results verified our expectations that the type of educational programme made impact on the level of learner´s metacognitive knowledge – the RWCT learners reached better results in considering the relative effectiveness of proposed strategies when working with text and proved higher performance in reading comprehension.

Keywords:

Metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive strategy, reading comprehension, Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking.