Enhancing Metacognition and Mindfulness in Middle School Students: Can Simultaneous Interventions Improve Academic Performance?

Students at HMTCA do not receive explicit metacognitive or mindfulness instruction in the classroom. Research on metacognition has shown a strong link between students’ metacognitive abilities and their subsequent academic performance, yet most teachers do not provide explicit metacognitive instruction in the classroom. Similarly, literature on mindfulness suggests that mindful practice can improve students’ self-regulatory skills and executive functioning, yet mindfulness is rarely incorporated into school curricula. In this study, we assessed the effectiveness of simultaneous interventions related to these two components by working with five eighth-grade social studies classes at HMTCA taught by one teacher. An eight-week metacognitive intervention was designed based on the Ambrose et al. model of metacognition in order to foster students’ use of metacognitive skills. In addition, an eight-week mindfulness curriculum was developed to cultivate students’ present-moment awareness. The five sections were divided among the separate conditions: two sections were randomly assigned to the Metacognitive Intervention, one section to the Mindfulness Intervention, one section to the combined Metacognition and Mindfulness Intervention, and one section as the control group. With pre and post-testing quantitative and qualitative measures, we assessed the students’ levels of metacognition and mindfulness in conjunction with grade changes from the first to third marking period. Findings from these analyses will be presented