Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between metacognitive awareness, mathematical literacy self-efficacy beliefs and problem solving skills, and the effects of metacognitive awareness and mathematical literacy self-efficacy beliefs on problem solving skills. This study used a correlational survey design, and was conducted in the Faculty of Education of Ondokuz Mayıs University in the 2014/15 spring semester. The sample group, selected used convenience sampling, consisted of a total of 171 prospective teachers. Data were collected using Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Akın, Abacı & Çetin, 2007), the Problem Solving Inventory (Şahin, Şahin & Heppner, 1993) and Math Literacy Self-Efficacy Measurement (Özgen & Bindak, 2008). For the data analysis, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and regression analysis were used.  Significant relationships were found to exist between the problem solving scores on the one hand and metacognitive awareness and math literacy self-efficacy scores on the other. In addition, the first stage of the regression analysis showed that metacognitive awareness scores are a significant predictor of problem solving skills, explaining 15% of the variation. In the second stage, it was found that metacognitive awareness and math literacy self-efficacy scores are both significant predictors of problem solving skills, together explaining 18% of the variation. This study shows that significant relationships and interactions exist between metacognitive awareness, mathematical literacy self-efficacy, and problem solving skills

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