The Effects of Implicit Belief of Intelligence on Metacognitive Skills and Project Design Engagement in an invention practice

Drawing on Dweck and Leggett’s (1988) implicit beliefs of intelligence framework, the present study explored the incremental belief of intelligence (IBI) and how it correlated to metacognitive skills that reflected vocational students’ project design engagement. Data were collected from students from 2 vocational high schools involved in project design for a national invention exhibition. In all, 196 useful returns were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis with structural equation modeling. Study results indicated that there was a positive relationship between IBI and the three types of metacognitive skills: planning and thinking strategies, being aware and monitoring, and evaluating and revising. Moreover, planning and thinking strategies as well as being aware and monitoring were positively related to project design engagement, but no significant relationship could be found between evaluating and revising and project design engagement. Vocational school teachers may refer to this study to encourage their students to practice metacognitive skills in device design so as to reach a high level of behavioral engagement in finding and solving problems during the invention process.