Meta-cognitive skills and learning & thinking style: Predicting academic achievement among school students

In the present study an endeavor has been made to study meta-cognitive skills and learning & thinking style of secondary school students as predictors of their academic achievement. The objectives of study are to find out the relationship meta-cognitive skills, learning & thinking style with their academic achievement and to predict academic achievement among school students on the basis of their meta-cognitive skills and learning & thinking style. In this descriptive study, meta-cognitive skills and learning & thinking style have been treated as independent variables whereas academic achievement has been treated as dependent variable. The sample selected through multi-stage random sampling technique consists of 500 students of 9^th class studying in private schools affiliated to Central Board of Secondary Education located in urban and rural area. Academic achievement had been measured through previous class i.e. 8^th class scores obtained by students. Meta-Cognitive Skills Scale (MCSS) developed by Gupta and Suman (2017) [10] and Style of Learning and Thinking (SOLAT) tool developed by Venkataraman (2011) [31] were used to collect the data. Pearson's coefficients of correlation and stepwise multiple regression were employed as statistical techniques in the present study. A significant relationship between meta-cognitive skills of secondary school students and their academic achievement was found and the same conclusion was drawn in the case of learning & thinking style. From the result it was inferred that both the variables, meta-cognitive skills and learning & thinking style were the significant predictors of academic achievement of secondary school students. However, from t-values, it was further concluded that the variable meta-cognitive skills was the strongest predictor of academic achievement in comparison to learning & thinking style of secondary school students.