A Study of the Impact of Metacognitive Prompting on Student Achievement in Developmental Algebra

Reforms in mathematics education have called for instruction that promotes sense making of mathematical concepts. One instructional strategy to encourage sense making is metacognitive prompting. A mixed methods action research study was implemented in one section of developmental algebra taught by the researcher. The purpose of the research was to determine the impact of metacognitive prompting on student achievement in this class. Gains between a pretest and posttest of Unit 2 served as the control. The third unit of course material was taught using metacognitive prompting, and gains between the pretest and posttest of Unit 3 served as the experimental group. It was hypothesized that student use of metacognitive strategies would increase student achievement. An ANCOVA was performed comparing the gains of Unit 2 to those of Unit 3 at the.05 significance level, but there was not sufficient evidence to indicate a significant difference in gains. An independent samples t test was used to determine whether the Unit 3 exam scores of the researched section were significantly higher than the Unit 3 exam scores of previous sections of this course. A positive growth was noted, though it was not statistically significant, t = 1.761, p = .085. There was, however, a significant increase in student use of metacognitive strategies, t = 2.198, p = .043