Metacognitive Teaching Strategies on Secondary School Students Academic Performance

The study was undertaken to examine the effect of metacognitive teaching strategies on secondary school students' performance in chemistry. The study adopted pretest post test quasi experimental design. Three hundred and sixty senior secondary school II (SSII) chemistry students were drawn from three secondary school in Obio/Akpor Local Government of Rivers State Nigeria. Three research questions and three hypotheses were posed for the study. The instrument for data collection was a twenty five-item multiple choice chemistry achievement test (CAT) developed by the researcher. Students were divided into two experimental groups and one control group. Students in the experimental groups were subjected to treatment using thinking-aloud and self assessment metacognitive teaching strategies while students in the control group were taught with conventional method. Mean, standard deviation, t-test and ANCOVA were used for data analysis. The results showed that students taught with thinking-aloud metacognitive strategies performed better in chemistry achievement test followed by self assessment metacognitive strategy than the conventional strategy. It was concluded that metacognitive teaching strategy such as thinking-aloud and self assessment if effectively utilized and applied by teachers in the instructional delivery in chemistry could significantly improve the performance of students.