Data Visualization Analysis of Metacognition in BE Problem Solving: Re-categorization and Its Implications

Widely acknowledged as knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena, metacognition has become a successful tool for researchers to investigate problem solving and other thinking processes in the instructional domain. However, much of the work on metacognition has studied these constructs piecemeal and mostly qualitatively with little evidence found about cognition in business English problem solving. In light of this, by statistically based re-categorization of metacognition in business English context, we investigated the interplay of metacognitive aspects in BE problem solving. 105 third-year college students participated in the study. Metacognitive aspects (metacognitive experiences, metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation) were quantitatively measured with statistical tools of SPSS, AMOS and Wordclouds, in which questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were employed to further explore 2 questions: (1) What are the prominent factors constituting BE metacognition? (2) To what extent is metacognition positively related to BE problem solving and perceived performance? Three categories of BE metacognition are identified and the data visualization analysis indicate a complex interplay of metacognition in BE problem solving, in which metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation play a statistically significant role.