Development Differences In Metacognitive Skills Between High-achieved Students And Low-achieved Students

low-achieved students in mathematics are largely due to the lack of the development of mathematical metacognitive skills besides many other reasons. Paying full attention to the differences in the development of metacognitive skills of both high-achieved and low-achieved students, at the same time helping the latter in accordance with their special characteristics, could effectively improve their mathematical performance. We chose 6 high-achieved students and 6 low-achieved students in mathematics from the first-grade students in Yanqing No.1 Middle School, and tested them weekly on mathematical metacognitive skills for 8 weeks. The results showed that: (1) The mathematical metaconitive skills of high-achieved students are superior to that of low-achieved students; (2) The degrees of difficulty affect the performance of mathematical mmetacognitive skills of low-achieved and high-achieved students differently. It makes less difference in the performance of high-achieved students compared to that of low-achieved students. (3)The mathematical metacognitive skills of high-achieved students and low-achieved students both improved to some degree in Senior Grade One. For both high-achieved students and low-achieved students, skills of predicting, planning and evaluation developed in the similar trends; the monitoring skill of high-achieved students improved greatly in the first week and kept improving in the following weeks, while that of the low-achieved students also improved quickly in the first week but did not improve obviously in the following weeks ,thus the development difference became larger and larger; (4) The development of mathematical metacognitive skills, especially the planning skill and monitoring skill were affected by the degrees of difficulty. The difference of grades grew less and less distinct based on the tests of various degrees of difficulty to the high-achieved students whereas that of low-achieved remained distinct. For both the high-achieved and the low-achieved students the development of skills of predicting and evaluation were affected by the degrees of difficulty similarly. We suggested that we improve the development of metacognitive skills of low-achieved students by providing exercises of proper difficulty.