The Relationship between Metacognitive Strategies and Self-Efficacy Beliefs: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

Self-efficacy has been a topic of interest of many researchers since the last couple of decades. Previous literature has revealed that self-efficacy plays a vital role in the usage of metacognitive strategies in language learning. The fundamental aim of this paper is to review those studies which were conducted on the relationship between self-efficacy and metacognitive strategies. Many writers have written reviews on the relationship of self-efficacy with various educational variables. However, there is scarcity of reviews regarding the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and metacognitive strategies. This review included 21 studies which were reviewed on the basis of following aspects: context of studies, gender, grade level, ethnicity, metacognitive strategy instruction, metacognitive strategies usage ranking, level of self-efficacy, research approaches and pre-test/post-test research designs. Also, several recommendations were presented at the end of the paper for future researchers.