Enhancing Metacognitive Knowledge of Cognition among Junior Secondary Students with Mathematics Disability in Everyday Arithmetic

Abstract

This study investigated the efficacy of metacognitive instructional strategy in the improvement of the knowledge of cognition among junior secondary students with Mathematics Disability (MD) in everyday arithmetic in Port Harcourt Local Government Area (LGA) of Rivers State, Nigeria. Pre-test, post-test quasi-experimental design was used. A total of 60 Junior Secondary Class 3 (JSC3) students with MD participated in the study. A diagnostic instrument, teacher judgment, and the internal examination results were used as criteria for the identification and selection of JSC3 students with MD for participation. Three instruments were used for data collection, viz: Everyday Arithmetic Problem-Solving Achievement Test (EAPSAT), Mathematics Disability Diagnostic Test (M2DT), and Metacognitive Strategy Assessment (MSA). The instruments were respectively used to measure everyday arithmetic achievement, diagnosis and metacognitive knowledge of cognition. The Cronbach alpha was used to determine the reliability of each section of MSA (declarative knowledge, α =0.81, conditional knowledge, α =0.84, procedural knowledge α =0.78). The test-retest method was used to determine the reliability of EAPSAT and M2DT to obtain indices of 0.83 and 0.80 respectively. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation whereas the hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The findings among others established that the metacognitive knowledge of students improved over time; there were significant main effects of metacognitive strategy on student procedural, declarative and conditional knowledge respectively. A recommendation of the study is that teachers should adopt the metacognitive strategy while teaching everyday arithmetic.