Relationships between Metacognition, Learning Strategies, and Emotions in Colombian University Students

The study of the relationships between metacognition, learning strategies, and positive and negative emotions is an emerging line of research that has been scarcely explored. This article aims to discuss the relationship among these variables in 1,096 university students from different academic programs at a Colombian university. We conducted a principal component analysis to reduce the dimensions represented in the items of the instruments administered and applied structural equation modeling to elucidate the existing interrelationships among the three variables under investigation. The results demonstrate a positive relationship between metacognition and learning strategies and between learning strategies and positive academic emotions. In contrast, negative academic emotions negatively correlate with learning strategies and metacognition. In brief, metacognition promotes learning strategies, while negative academic emotions discourage them.