Self-regulated transfer effects of metacognitive strategies across disciplinary contexts among primary and secondary school students: a microanalytic experimental study

Inroduction Metacognitive strategies taught in one subject often fail to carry over to others, yet many studies rely on strategy reproduction as the criterion of transfer and rarely examine whether codes are equivalent across disciplines or whether group-level conclusions hold for individuals. Methods With N = 228 students across grades five, seven, and eight from twelve classes of three public schools, this study proposes a dual condition transfer model that separates functional isomorphism from carrier adaptation. A within-subject microanalytic experiment manipulated transfer distance at three levels across twelve sessions over 6 weeks. A two-layer coding scheme labeled every regulatory event with a discipline-independent function and a discipline-specific carrier. Cross-disciplinary measurement invariance was tested, and two probes captured an articulated transfer plan. After ergodicity was tested, a multilevel model and a person-specific graphical vector autoregression (graphical VAR) were run in parallel. Results The results were consistent with all five hypotheses. Functional activation declined with distance, structural isomorphism declined less in the training group, carrier adaptation predicted task performance more than twice as strongly as functional reproduction did, and copying was statistically distinguishable from a meaningful positive association with performance. Calibration accuracy showed a significant indirect effect consistent with partial mediation, and higher conditional strategy knowledge was associated with a smaller decline of adaptation at far distance. The ergodicity assumption was not supported, and four types of transferrers corresponded only partly to the training groups. The plan-execution gap widened with distance, and 68.4% of the students showing no transfer at far distance still articulated a workable rewriting plan when prompted. Discussion The findings provide empirical support for distinguishing functional preservation from carrier adaptation, offering a potentially useful diagnostic framework for process-oriented classroom assessment.