Metacognition of Adolescents in Relation to their Gender and Residential Area

Adolescence is the most vulnerable stage to the physical, emotional, social and cognitive problems. Cognitive changes that occur during adolescence are increased in abstract, idealistic and logical thinking. Metacognition is a subdivision of cognition, or a type of cognition. Metacognition is one's ability to use prior knowledge to plan a strategy for approaching a learning task, take necessary steps to solving the problem, reflect on and evaluate results, and modify one's approach as needed. Cognition helps to generate new knowledge through mental processes and also helps to use the knowledge that people have in daily life. This study examines the assessment of metacognition in relation to residential area and gender of adolescents. The study was conducted in Hisar district of Haryana state. Two areas were selected purposively, i.e., rural and urban. From urban area Hisar city and from rural area three villages namely Kharia, Dhobi, and Kirtan were selected for collection of data. From each schools 25 boys and 25 girls of 14-16 year were included in the study. The total sample comprised of 300 adolescents. Metacognition Awareness Inventory (MAI) by Schraw and Dennison (1994) was used for assessing metacognition. Results disclosed that status of male respondents on 'knowledge about cognition' confirmed moderate level of metacognition on procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge and total knowledge about cognition whereas, about declarative knowledge female respondents had moderate level of metacognition. The status of male respondents on other component of metacognition, i.e., 'regulation of cognition' confirmed that majority of respondents had moderate level of metacognition, viz., information management strategies, debugging strategies, evaluation, total regulation of cognition. The results further divulged that on total sample the status of respondents on metacognition confirmed that more percentage of the respondents had moderate level of metacognition depicting high percentage among males than females. The results divulged that on total sample the status of respondents on metacognition indicated that higher percentage of the respondents had moderate level of metacognition showing higher percentage of urban adolescents as compare to rural respondents.