An ınvestigation of the relationship between middle school students’ metacognitive skills, mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement

Abstract

The purpose of the present research was to examine the relationship between middle school students’ metacognitive skills, mathematics self-efficacy, and mathematics achievement. The research was a correlational study. A total of 190 middle school 7th graders participated in the study. Metacognitive skills scale which is a sub-scale of ‘Motivating skills in learning scale’ and ‘the resources of self-efficacy’ scale were used as data collection tools. Mathematics achievement was the dependent variable, and metacognitive skills and mathematics self-efficacy were the independent variables in the research. According to the findings, no significant difference was detected between 7th-grade students’ mathematics scores in terms of gender variable. When the relationship between the variables are examined, it was revealed that there was a positive and high-level relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement; however, a positive but low-level relationship was found out between metacognitive skills and mathematics achievement. It was unearthed that students’ metacognitive skills predicted their mathematics achievement in a positive way; about 18% of students’ mathematics achievement was predicted by their metacognitive skills. The personal experiences sub-dimension of mathematics self-efficacy explained about 60% of the total variance in mathematics achievement by itself. Other sub-dimensions were excluded from regression analysis and calculations. Furthermore, students’ metacognitive skills and mathematics selfefficacy explained about 52% of the total variance regarding their mathematics achievement.