Discipline: Education Administration
This study was conceptualized basically to help improve instruction. Do metacognitive strategies improve reading performance, metacognitive awareness, and readers's self-perception? The subjects were 282 sixth graders from the three schools of Balara, Ateneo and Miriam taught by regular reading teachers following the traditional and metacognitive lesson plans.
The strategies included think aloud, focusing, pupil-generated questions, reciprocal question-answer, prior knowledge, teacher modeling, Know-Want-Learn, visual imaging andfix-up. Metacognitive classes used these strategies, while the traditional classes followed the procedures in the reading text.
Pretests included a Researcher-Made Test (RMT) and the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) to measure reading performance; the Metacognitive Reading Awareness Inventory (MRAI) to measure pupil's level of awareness of the metacognitive strategies; and the Reader's Self-Perception Scale (RSPS) to measure the pupil's self-image. After about 7 weeks, the same tests were given again to find out whether there were significant gains in reading performance, metacognitive reading awareness, and readers' self-perception.
Based on the results, we can safely say that the use of metacognitive strategies had a significant and positive effect on the reading performance of the students in all three schools except for MAT and MRAI at the Ateneo. Ateneo teachers were already using many of the strategies in their classes so the advantage of meta cognitive teaching was not significant. The overall impact of meta cognitive teaching strategies was more effective at Miriam and Balara, schools where the use of these strategies were new.