Exploratory appraisal of metacognitive skilfulness and academic performance of rural adolescents

The present study was undertaken to explore the status of metacognitive skillfulness and academic performance of rural adolescents (13-16 years) across two socio-economic strata. The study was carried out in rural schools of block-I, Ludhiana District. The sample comprised of 240 rural adolescents equally distributed over four grades (7th, 8th, 9th & 10th grade), two sexes and two socio-economic groups i.e. middle & low socio-economic group. Metacognitive skills of the subjects were assessed using a Self-structured Questionnaire adapted from Metacognition Inventory (Govil, 2003) and Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Schraw and Dennison 1994). To assess the academic performance of the subjects, the aggregate percentage of marks obtained by them in the last school examination was procured from the concerned teachers. Socio-economic Status Scale developed by Meenakshi (2001) was used to ascertain the socio-economic status of the selected subjects. Results revealed significant gender differentials in metacognitive skills of rural adolescents with major proportion of female respondents having high level of metacognition as well as better mean scores as compared to their male counterparts. Adolescent girls also surpassed boys with better academic achievement.