Developing secondary school students’ metacognitive abilities: A comparison of Hong Kong, Singapore and UK mathematics textbooks

What is learning and how could the learning in mathematics be enhanced has fallen into debate for many years. Singapore rank number one in both TIMSS and PISA in 2015. What are the insights we could earned from such competition? Regarding to the facts that Singapore is one of the first countries in implementing the metacognition into their mathematics curriculum in 1990s (Chan & Leung, 2013), metacognition may possible be the answer we are searching for. There is no doubt that textbooks take a very important role in this. White & Mesa (2014) indicated that lecturer rely highly on textbook in their teaching especially the tasks assigned. However, researches with textbooks related to mathematical content and researches on their potential in developing metacognitive knowledge are limited (Mesa, 2004; Mesa, 2010). Especially, comparisons between metacognitive strategies among textbooks in different countries are very limited. Thus the following questions are proposed to be investigated. 1. Does mathematics textbook emphasis enough metacognitive strategies in enhancing students’ metacognition? 2. Does the pattern of using metacognitive strategies in mathematics textbooks different among countries/cities? The assessment is divided as seven categories: think aloud, questioning, self-questioning, error detection, group activity, alternative strategies and reflection. It is identical to those suggested by Chan and Leung (2013). Result shows that think aloud is the most popular strategy used in textbooks among Singapore, British and Hong Kong. However, other strategies weight about only 20% in total. It is suggested that more metacognitive ingredients could be added in textbooks in enhancing students’ metacognition. Copyright © 2017 The Education University of Hong Kong.