Investigating the metacognition calibrations and mathematical metacognition awareness of 8th grade students; İn the context of solving skill-based mathematics questions

The aim of this study is to examine the mathematical metacognition awareness of 8th-grade students and their metacognition calibrations in skill-based mathematics questions in terms of many variables and to determine the relationship between these factors. In the study, a quantitative approach, one of the descriptive survey models exploring an existing situation, the correlational survey design was used. The sampling group of the research consisted of 217 females and 303 males in a total of 520 students who were studying in the 8th grade of the state schools in Burdur province during the 2021-2022 academic year. The data were collected via the "Mathematical Metacognition Awareness Scale (MÜFÖ)" created by Kaplan and Duran (2016) to evaluate the mathematical metacognition awareness of the middle school students, and the "Skill-Based Mathematics Questions Test (BTMS)" developed by the researcher to evaluate the mathematical performance and metacognitive judgments of the students as well as the "Self-Assessment Scale (ÖDÖ)". In the study, the Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of MÜFÖ was obtained as .881. The skill-based mathematic questions published by the Ministry of National Education were used in the determination process of BTMS. The discrimination indexes of BTMS are over .30 and the item difficulty indexes range from .27 to .81. The students' metacognitive judgments were obtained at the local level and after solving the math questions. In the analysis process of the data, descriptive statistics, unrelated groups t-test, related and unrelated groups ANOVA, and Multiple Correlation techniques were used. In the results of the study, there was a significant difference between the gender and the mathematical metacognition awareness, self-evaluation, and biases of the students however it did not differentiate their mathematical performance and accuracy. In the same vein, the socio-economic levels of the students significantly influenced their mathematical metacognition awareness, mathematics performance, and self-assessment while it did not differentiate the metacognition calibration of the students. Similarly, the mathematic marks of the students in schools have a significant impact on their mathematical metacognition awareness, mathematics performance, and self-assessments. There was a significant and high level of relationship between the mathematic performance and the self–assessments of the students however there was not a significant relationship between their mathematical metacognition awareness and metacognitive calibration. It was realized that there was a negative relationship between the math performance and the bias scores of the students however the students' bias scores had a positive and average relationship with the students' self-assessments. Moreover, another finding obtained from the study was that students were better calibrated in medium and difficult math questions than in easy questions, and they tended to be overconfident in difficult and easy questions compared to medium difficulty questions. Key Words: Mathematical Metacognition Awareness, Metacognition Calibration, Self-Assessment, Skill-Based Math Questions.