Meta-Cognitive skills: An analysis of their influence on academic achievement among school students

Abstract

The present study was undertaken to study the academic achievement of secondary school students in relation to metacognitive skills, locality and gender. Academic achievement was treated as dependent variable while, meta-cognitive skills, locality and gender were treated as independent variables. A sample of 500 secondary school students was selected through multi-stage random sampling technique. Meta-Cognitive Skills Scale (MCSS-GMS) developed by Gupta and Suman (2017) was used to collect the data. The obtained data were analysed using Three Way ANOVA with 2×2×2 factorial design. Levene's Test of Homogeneity of Variance was also applied to test the assumption of homogeneity of variance for ANOVA. Main effects of meta-cognitive skills, locality and gender on academic achievement of secondary school students were found to be significant. Significant interaction effect of meta-cognitive skills & locality; locality and gender was reported on academic achievement of secondary school students. Further, no significant interaction effect of meta-cognitive skills & gender was reported on academic achievement of secondary school students. Triple interaction effect of metacognitive skills, locality and gender on academic achievement of secondary school students was found to be significant. The findings of the present study will be beneficial for educational thinkers, psychologists, teachers and others who are concerned with the sphere of education. The more emphasis on development of meta-cognitive skills in the school curriculum is considered important because of its impact in improving academic performance of students.