Metacognition and reading comprehension: Age and gender differences

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of the authors' work on age differences in children's metacognition and reading comprehension during upper elementary and high school (9-17-years old) in Croatia, with an emphasis on gender differences. The focus was placed on upper elementary school as a crucial period for the development of metacognition in the domain of reading comprehension. In the first and the second part we draw on the literature supporting the developmental effects on metacognition and reading skill, as well as gender differences in reading comprehension. In the third part the results of several studies conducted by the authors are presented, followed by discussion on obtained age and gender differences. The findings indicated that the importance of metacognition for text comprehension intensified with age with a noticeable increase in this effect in the transition from lower to upper elementary school (after about 10 years of age). However, metacognition also played an important role in reading comprehension during high school. The pattern of age differences varied across components of metacognition. The effect of gender on metacognition in reading was mainly evident from the better performance of girls on the comprehension monitoring tasks. Finally, implications for education are discussed. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.