Conocimiento metacognitivo del lenguaje escrito: Instrumento de medida y fundamentación teórica

The paper presents a multiple choice questionnaire—applied in Chile and Argentina—intended to measure the development of metacognitive knowledge referred to school-age children's understanding written texts in terms of specific categories, included in our reading model. After a brief explanation of the theoretical reasons for focussing on declarative and conditional knowledge, we introduce the metacomprehension model that served as basis to construct the instrument. This has been tested and improved over a period of time in which several research studies were carried out, and the results correlated with variables such as: age, school level, gender, school, socio-cultural status, etc. A brief justification for evaluating the 6 response options for each of the 48 questions is followed by statistical evidence of the model's internal consistency and the distinctiveness of each category. Finally, we discuss some general results from our work in Chile and Argentina, with a sample of 540 students, in order to provide some guidelines for future comparative research.