Metacognitive Skills of Male Students with Field Independent Cognitive Style in Problem Solving Pathuddi Universitas Tadulako Palu, Indonesia pathuddin@untad.ac.id I Ketut Budayasa Surabaya State University Surabaya, Indonesia ketutbudayasa@yahoo.com Agung Lukito Surabaya State University Surabaya, Indonesia gunglukito@yahoo.com Abstract—This study aims at exploring the metacognitive skills of male students with a field-independent cognitive style in solving the problem. The main data was collected through the student-written works and in-depth interviews. To achieve this purpose, there were several procedures established in analyzing the data related to metacognitive skills. Data analysis is done through data reduction, data presentation, data interpretation and conclusion drawing. From the qualitative data analysis, we found that during the problem-solving process this subject has shown the metacognitive skills including planning, monitoring, and evaluating. Keywords—metacognitive skills, male, cognitive style, field independent, problem-solving I. INTRODUCTION The objective of instructional teaching one-variable limit expectedly covers: Students are able to understand how one- variable limit function contributes to science and its advantages upon other learning materials, especially differential; Students are able to understand the use of one- variable limit concept to investigate, interpret, and make a decision related to either calculus or applied problems; Students are able to understand how one-variable limit as basic concept could contribute to other courses such as calculus II or advanced calculus; Students are able to understand how to communicate the one-variable limit concept, especially its function in basic science [1]. It is a very high demand that can not be achieved only through learning that emphasizes rote learning, routine work-out exercises, commonly used in conventional learning. One way of learning that can meet that goal is learning problem- solving by involving metacognition [2], [3]. Metacognition is an aspect of critical thinking that includes students' ability to develop a systematic way of solving problems and to imagine and evaluate the productivity of thought processes. Flavell states that metacognition consists of metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experience or regulation [4]–[6]. Moreover, Brown also divides metacognition into knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition [3, 5]. Metacognition in education has been widely used to optimize learner’s competence in solving problems [7]–[10], to understand the content of readings [11], to optimize learning achievement [12], and metacognition can lead to more active learning [13], Students, whose metacognition is high and who have critical thinking and are well-creative, will be at easy to learn and understand various concepts or materials expansively [14], [15]. Metacognition was an essential element underlying student thinking skills and conceptual understanding [16], [17]. Principally, attempt to include metacognition into various learning activities expectedly offers immense advantages to enhance learning quality In a simply superficial definition, metacognition means thinking about thinking or cognition about cognition [5], [12], [18], [19]. There are numerous definitions regarding the metacognition developed in the cognitive psychology field, one of which is Flavell’s definition, stating that metacognition is competence to understand and monitor an individual’s thinking, assumption as well as its implication [20], [21]. This notion emphasizes on understanding and monitoring an individual’s thinking; therefore, the process of metacognition differs in each person depending on its competence. From elaborated definitions above, metacognition in this study refers to awareness and control or regulation of one’s cognitive process. Therefore, there are two important aspects of metacognition, which are: awareness about cognition; and control or regulation of cognition processes during the learning process of understanding the concept of one-variable limit. The cognitive awareness, in this case, covers the assessment of defined and undefined things. It also refers to the method used to set the cognitive process. Meanwhile, the control of cognition refers to directing, planning, and monitoring cognitive activities while understanding the concept of one-variable limit. Besides that, there are four important components of metacognition, which are: planning, monitoring, evaluating, and revising. These four components are elaborated as follows: (1) Planning refers to intentional activities which organize the learning process. The attitude in this phase consists of defining learning objectives, learning arrangement, learning strategies, and learning time allocation; (2) Monitoring refers to particular activities which direct serial learning progresses, for example, the learner could query himself “what am I learning? Or am I on the right track?”, etc. Monitoring itself must be particularly set during learning activities; (3) Evaluating learning process covers the measurement of learning progress achieved during learning activities. This evaluation systematically helps learner by developing several competencies and strategies necessarily needed to gain a new applicative situation; (4) Revising learning process includes the modification of previous plan by highlighting on learning objectives, learning strategies, and learning approach [2], [21]. Meanwhile, Brown [21] defines metacognition as an awareness of an individual’s thinking activities; a method 256 Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 1st International Conference on Advanced Multidisciplinary Research (ICAMR 2018) Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), volume 227