Educational achievements in mathematics: the role of metacognitive resources and self-disclosure of abilities in 4th and 5th grade students

• Chernyavskaya V.S.

  Valentina S. Chernyavskaya. Vladivostok State University. Vladivostok. Russia

• Kristina S. Zdor

  Kristina S. Zdor. Vladivostok State University. Vladivostok. Russia

The substantiation of the educational context of the phenomenon of metacognitive resources of personality, in particular metacognitive strategies and metacognitive knowledge, is given. An overview of domestic and foreign research in this area is presented. It is shown that a
wide range of studies of metacognitive resources shows their contribution to the success of various kinds of activities, including, and especially, educational ones. The features of youngeradolescentes, moving from junior school to secondary school, where they study with different
subject teachers, are considered. Mathematics is singled out as a special subject that causes difficulties. It is the most abstract subject and develops thinking. The empirical study was conducted on a solid sample of a large private school in Vladivostok (grades 4–5). Educational
achievements in mathematics, metacognitive resources were studied (strategies according to D. Everson and metacognitive knowledge according to the methodology of E.Yu. Savin, T.A. Smirnova), and self-disclosure of abilities was considered (according to V.S. Chernyavskaya).
The Mann – Whitney criterion was used to determine statistical differences in indicators. It turned out that the academic achievements of 4th and 5th grade students significantly differ in favor of a younger sample. The use of metacognitive strategies and metacognitive knowledge
differ in the same way. Among the 5th grade students, there were slightly more people with selfdisclosure of abilities, but the differences did not reach reliability (according to the Fisher criterion). The number of words in the self-description of 4th grade students significantly exceeded
the corresponding number of fifth graders (Mann – Whitney criterion). The results obtained require further investigation of the causes, age-related nature, specifics of the influence of teachers on educational achievements, or on the development of metacognitive abilities of students.
Keywords: metacognitive abilities, metacognitive knowledge, educational achievements, self-disclosure of abilities, mathematics, schoolchildren