Metacognition and Student Achievement in Mathematics

Abstract

Today’s students often struggle when solving with mathematical problems on tests. While students may have the content knowledge to solve these problems, often they do not have the ability to identify what content knowledge should be applied and when it should be applied. At times, students make simple computational mistakes or simply give up on problems part way through because they do not feel that they are on the right path. Students need to be equipped with metacognitive strategies which will help them to overcome these issues. This paper discusses metacognition and its’ impact on student achievement in mathematics. In this study, students were given three Regents exam problems which they had never seen before. The students were then taught two metacognitive strategies a) think aloud and b) planning, monitoring and evaluating. After the students practiced the metacognitive strategies and were familiar with them, they were given three different Regents exam problems to determine the impact that the metacognitive strategies had on student achievement in mathematics. The result found that there was a significant difference in the pre-test and post-test scores, overall and in particular with female participants.