The role of metacognitive strategies for the development of digital competence in students of compulsory secondary education: media and information processing literacy

Abstract

Media literacy and information processing is a fundamental part of students’ digital competence. Teachers have the responsibility to develop students’ digital competence and thus improve their use of the Internet for learning. This study aims to answer the question to what extent teachers’ metacognitive strategies can predict students’ use of these Internet skills for learning. METHOD. For this purpose, a structural model was carried out using confirmatory factor analysis. Data from the PISA 2018 questionnaire to 20,205 language teachers were used. First, three dimensions of a theoretical model were validated: learning support, metacognitive use for learning and metacognitive use in reading comprehension. These three dimensions of the theoretical model have been created on the basis of various items on the subject included in the PISA questionnaire for language teachers. Second, causal effects were studied with regression analysis and correlations between metacognitive factors. RESULTS. The results show that the model has a good fit and that the use of metacognitive strategies can explain 41.5% of the proper internet usage. The results show that teachers who use metacognitive strategies during their teaching are much more able to teach students to use the Internet appropriately so that they can develop media literacy. DISCUSSION. These results predict that teacher training should include the development of metacognitive strategies, such as sharing experiences and training in concrete strategies, so that teachers can improve their teaching and achieve media literacy in students, so that they can take advantage of the use of the Internet for learning.