Page 19 - Jurnal Kurikulum BPK 2020

skills if they want to succeed (Momsen et al., 2010). In addition, it is expected of them to
synthesize various biological concept accurately.
The unfamiliar examination format also poses a new challenge to students which will
influence student’s evaluation on their approaches to learning. Study by Stanger-Hall (2012)
showed that student respond differently when presented with different exam format. In the
study, multiple-choice only question hinders critical thinking process while constructed
respond questions encourages students to become critical thinkers. In current study, students
indicated that they have made changes to their learning methods when studying for class,
homework and examination. Some student even constantly changing their strategy for different
tests. This means that being metacognitive gave student the counter measure that allow them
to deal with newly introduced challenges.

Being metacognitive allow students to enhance their soft skills

Soft skill refers to the personalities, attributes, qualities and personal behaviour of a
person which characterize how they interact with others. According to Gupta (2009), soft skills
include attributes such as communication, problem-solving, self-motivation, decision-making,
and time management skills. Study by Majid et al. (2012) identified the top five important soft
skills according to students; teamwork and collaboration, decision-making, problem-solving,
time management and critical thinking skills. In their research, they also concluded that soft
skills often highly sought after by employers recruiting fresh graduates. Students with
metacognition tend to have more develop soft skills such as critical thinking because they
always think about how their action would generate desirable outcome (Choy & Cheah, 2009;
Magno, 2010). In addition, research by Wilen and Phillips (1995) show critical thinking skills
is often required when one is trying to make informed decisions involving group activity.
Soft skills like self-regulation is also elevated through metacognition which allows
student to understand and scaffold their learning process (Schunk, 1996). Schunk believes
students must have set of goals and learning strategies to achieve the set goals. Then student
must follow through with the strategies and monitor their progress. This shows that self-
regulation is influenced by a few factors which include cognitive, metacognitive, and
motivational components (Zimmerman, 2000). Zimmerman stress out the importance of
metacognition to enable students to understand and monitor their cognition. In addition,
metacognition do require motivation to sustain the momentum of learning process to allow
success in achieving the set goals.

Students value both performance and mastery

According to Ames & Archer (1988), students that value performance as their main
goal in education often strive to obtain good grades while those who value mastery of subject
matter prioritise understanding. Their research suggested students with mastery goals tend to
use more effective learning approach, had positive attitude for class activity, open towards
challenging task and believe in effort will result in success. On the other hand, performance
goal students focus on their ability and believes that lacking certain ability is the reason for
failure. In the current study, we saw these two factors are not mutually exclusive. Most biology
students shown to be both performance and mastery orientated. They often change their
approach to learning biology topic based on their exam grades as well as their ability to
understand the concept. This is in line with a research by Pintrich (2000) which suggested the
interdependence or independence of performance and mastery are complex. This is because
they find there are empirical data from correlational studies indicating mastery and performance
goals may be negatively correlated, uncorrelated, or even positively correlated.

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