Effectiveness of performance assessment on meta cognitive skills

Abstract

Performance assessment is used to evaluate higher-order thinking and the acquisition of knowledge, concepts, and skills required for students to succeed in the 21st century. Metacognition is thinking about thinking and is a process consisting of planning, monitoring, cognitive strategies and awareness. The purpose of this article is identifying the impact of performance assessment patterns on students’ meta-cognition by developing assessment model in a quasi-experimental study. The subjects were 87 preuniversity science students that select from population by random method and then randomly assign patterns to experimental group and control group. The tool used for the collection of data was O’Nils and Abedi (1996) Metacognitive Skills Inventory, and for analysis of date were used two factorrs covariate analysis (ANCOVA). Result showed that there is significant influence of performance assessment on all dimensions of metacognitive skills, as we find that in the all dimensions metacognitive skills in traditional assessment group scored significantly lesser than students who were in performance assessment group. Also boys and girls students did not differ in their scoring on metacognitive skills, as in all the dimensions. So the interaction between assessment group and sex on metacognitive skills was found to be non-significant.

Key words: Performance assessment, Metacognitive skills