Author

Bailey Cowden

Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Casto, Kathleen

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

Research on metacognition and the awareness of one’s writing process has been linked with higher quality writing evaluations from instructors. What remains unknown is if these practices also improve wellbeing associated with the writing process. Academic burnout is the psychological experience of high levels of stress and expectations of high performance, which negatively impacts student wellbeing and could be mitigated through metacognitive processes. Study 1 examined how burnout patterns from before to after a three week writing task differed between students assigned to a metacognitive writing process intervention versus students who were not assigned an intervention. Study 1 found that getting students to engage in metacognitive processes is difficult and that students spontaneously adopt a variety of metacognitive strategies that differ from the metacognitive awareness intervention. Study 2 surveyed 61 students and found that metacognitive awareness of writing is negatively correlated with academic burnout. Overall, these results point to the general idea that writing awareness does more than bolster instructor evaluations of writing; it may also prevent or at least reduce burnout.

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