Effects of practicing self-monitoring of mathematical problem-solving heuristics on impulsive and reflective college students' heuristics knowledge and problem-solving ability

The authors designed a step-by-step self-monitoring method to help impulsive students overcome their unwillingness to self-monitor. They predicted (a) that self-monitoring in general would help student learning of the heuristics of solving mathematical problems, (b) that self-monitoring would be more helpful for the impulsive students than for the reflective students, and (c) that step-by-step self-monitoring would be more helpful for the impulsive students than an external reminder that provided cues for general self-monitoring. The first 2 predictions were supported by the results of the study. As for the 3rd prediction, general self-monitoring was found to be more beneficial than step-by-step self-monitoring for the impulsive students. The findings are discussed in terms of competition for cognitive resources between learning and self-monitoring.