Experimental Research on Metacognitive Competence Development at Freshmen Students from Three Romanian Universities

We appreciate that the educational work has to count on the profound knowledge of causes, conditions and favoring factors and especially of those that prevent the improving of university education quality. If we agree with the principle of centering the teaching -education process on the student, then the deciphering the individual mechanisms of the complex process of learning represents the basis of all researches of modernizing the teaching-learning process. The research was focused to identify the main difficulties encountered of freshmen students in their learning process and also to enable them with modern techniques for efficient learning (http://www.uaiasi.ro/DPPD/METACOGNITIE_92-106). Due to the instruments of psycho-pedagogical investigation, through qualitative and quantitative analyses, we will be able to offer the students, the teaching and leading staff that expertise that could lead to the improvement of education quality. The hypothesis of the project is: if the students gain the learning techniques, then the results of the learning process will be a response to the postmodern society challenges. The university should offer to the students differentiated tasks according to their individual needs. The main difficulties the students meet in their learning process are linked to: the lack of learning skills, the lack of motivation and the wrong teaching style. The results emphasized the students' perceptions upon their cognitive processing during their preparation for an exam and upon their own learning style. The read-in of the individual mechanism of the complex learning process is the basic prerequisite for all searching for modernization of the teaching process in order to contribute to the better quality of education. The results pointed out that the students have gained abilities of different techniques of intellectual work, which are so useful during the university years, as well as to their preparing for the long term learning.