Assessment of the Metacognitive Awareness and its implication on Technical College Students Academic Achievement in Niger State

Abstract

This study assessed technical students' metacognitive awareness and its implication on their academic achievement in Niger State technical colleges. The study adopted a correlation survey research design. The population of the study was 188 National Technical Certificate (NTC) II technical students. Three research questions and three null hypotheses, tested at 0.05 level of significance, guided the study. The instruments used for data collection were Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) and Technical drawing Achievement Test (TDAT). The inventory was validated by experts for use in Nigeria context. The trial test for determining the coefficient of stability of the instrument was carried out using 40students in Government Science Technical College Garki, Abuja in the Federal Capital Territory. The reliability coefficient computed for the achievement test was found to be 0.88. Mean was used to answer the research questions. Kendall's Tau-b correlation coefficient was applied for the measurement of correlation among/between the variables of interest, while t-test statistics was employed to test the hypotheses. The study found out that male students performed better than the female students in the achievement test and MAI subscales. The study revealed among others that urban students performed better than rural students in the achievement test and MAI subscales; there was a link among internet usage, library habits, students' metacognition and students' achievement; performance of highly metacognitively aware students was better on the achievement test than low metacognitively aware students; there was no significant difference between metacognition of male and female students and between urban and rural students. Consequently, it was recommended among others that the training of students should be focused on where they need support to develop their metacognition and that internet surfing and reading library books have good impact on metacognitive awareness.