Cognitive Flexibility and Metalinguisitc Awareness of Student Journalists

This study examined the predictive contribution of cognitive flexibility to metalinguistic awareness among elementary student journalists. It addressed a gap in school-based journalism research by linking students’ adaptive cognitive processes with their conscious ability to analyze language form, meaning, tone, and communicative purpose. A quantitative descriptive-correlational design was used with 126 Grade 4 to Grade 6 student journalists from public elementary schools in Manay South District, Division of Davao Oriental, Philippines. Data were collected through adapted five-point survey instruments that measured cognitive flexibility across conceptual transfer, feedback utilization, and attention control, and metalinguistic awareness across syntactic, cultural, morphological, phonological, semantic, and communicative awareness. The instruments were reviewed by experts and pilot tested, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of 0.882 for cognitive flexibility and 0.967 for metalinguistic awareness. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and multiple linear regression were used for analysis. Results showed that cognitive flexibility was very high overall (M = 4.25, SD = 0.63), with attention control as the highest domain (M = 4.30, SD = 0.62). Metalinguistic awareness was high overall (M = 4.08, SD = 0.67), with communicative awareness as the highest domain (M = 4.15, SD = 0.70). Cognitive flexibility had a high positive correlation with metalinguistic awareness (r = 0.720, R2 = 0.52, p = 0.000). The regression model was significant (R = 0.790, R2 = 0.624, adjusted R2 = 0.615, F(3, 122) = 85.300, p = 0.000). All cognitive flexibility domains were significant predictors, with attention control showing the largest standardized coefficient (B = 0.260, beta = 0.230), followed by feedback utilization and conceptual transfer. The findings support the integration of attention-focused revision, feedback cycles, and transfer-based language tasks in elementary campus journalism instruction.