Poster #11 - The role of metacognition in inequalities related to socioeconomic background in preschoolers’ math and language abilities

• In Event: Poster Session 11

Abstract

Metacognition refers to knowledge and skills (such as planning, monitoring and evaluation) involving reflexivity about one's own cognitive processes (Flavell, Miller & Miller, 2002). These are of major interest in education because they are closely related to academic achievement in math and language (for meta-analyses of both correlational and interventional data, see Ohtani & Hisaka, 2018; Dignath et al., 2008 and de Boer et al., 2018). However, the large majority of studies has been conducted in primary and secondary school students and few are focused on preschoolers (Bryce et al., 2015; Maric & Sakac, 2018). In addition, while the effect of students’ socioeconomic background on academic achievement has been studied at length - with educational inequalities already witnessed in preschool (Larson et al., 2015; Sirin, 2005) - the effect of the family socioeconomic status (SES) on the metacognitive abilities of children and adolescents has received little attention (Muijs & Bokhove, 2020). The present study is the first to investigate the extent to which the effect of SES on preschoolers’ mathematical and language abilities could be explained in part by the effect of SES on their metacognition. Ninety kindergarteners (M= 5.5 ± 0.3 years of age) from six classes in four schools located in socially diverse areas participated in the study. We used the Metacognitive Knowledge Interview (Marulis et al., 2016) and the Children’s Independent Learning Development questionnaire (Whitebread et al. 2009) to assess respectively children’s metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive skills. Mathematical abilities (i.e., counting, numeration, and arithmetic operations) and language (i.e., vocabulary, phonology, and grammar) were measured using subtests from two standardized tests, respectively the Diagnostic Test of Basic Skills in Mathematics (Van Nieuwenhove et al., 2001) and the Evaluation of the Development for 5- to 6-year-olds (Azzano et al., 2011). To determine family SES for each child, the parents reported their level of education and their occupation. Data analyses were conducted on four composite scores (metacognition, mathematical abilities, language abilities and SES) and computed based on principal component analyses including the raw data collected for each construct. We then computed a double mediation including ‘Metacognition’ as the common mediator of the two ‘SES – Mathematical abilities’ and ‘SES – Language abilities’ relations. As shown in Figure 1, we found that metacognitive abilities totally mediated the relation between SES and mathematical abilities (direct path: β= .18, p > .05, indirect path: β= .21, p < .01) and partially mediated the one between SES and language abilities (direct path: β= .37, p < .001, indirect path: β= .18, p < .01). In conclusion, our study provides the first evidence that as early as in preschool, inequalities related to socioeconomic background in mathematical and language abilities could be partly explained by the effect of SES on children’s metacognition. In line with findings showing that fostering metacognitive abilities could be effective in improving academic achievement especially in school aged students from low SES families (De Boer et al., 2018), interventions aiming at reducing educational inequalities should target the promotion of metacognition ideally in preschoolers.

Authors

• Mélanie Maximino Pinheiro, University Paris Cité
  Presenting Author

• Carlo Barone, Sciences Po

• Grégoire Borst, Paris Descartes University