METACOGNITION AWARENESS, METACOGNITIVE USE AND STUDENTS’ CHEMISTRY ACHIEVEMENT IN POST BASIC SCHOOLS IN ONDO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study is about influence of metacognitive strategies and metacognitive use on student’s academic achievement in chemistry. It was conducted in public post basic schools in Ondo state, Nigeria. A total of 1,307 chemistry students were the respondents of the study. Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) designed by Schraw and Dennison (1994) was adapted in this study. Scenarios were given in the developed Metacognitive Awareness Scale (MAS) used in this study and respondents were required to judge how applicable to them the strategies that follow each scenario. MAS cover the demographic information of the students and contains the scenarios and the strategies to be rated as applicable or not applicable. Eight scenarios are given to the students with 28 strategies to be judged. Chemistry Students Metacognitive Strategies Questionnaire (CSMSQ) made up of 25 items was used to measure the use of chemistry students’ metacognitive strategies in chemistry. The scales were administered to another population having the same characteristics with the study population to determine the reliability of the scale using cronbach alpha reliability coefficient and found to be 0.87 and 0.80 respectively. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis were utilized to examine the data collected. There was a significant contribution of metacognitive awareness to the prediction of chemistry achievement of students while there was no significant contribution of metacognitive use to the prediction of chemistry achievement of post basic chemistry students. About 2.2% of the variance is accounted for by the two predictor variables examined in this study when taken together. 25 items were used to measure the use of metacognition in chemistry with an average weighted mean of 2.94 out of possible 4.0. It is concluded that while chemistry students are aware of metacognition, the students are not using the strategies in chemistry classes. The study recommends that chemistry post basic students be trained to improve on their metacognitive strategies use in chemistry.