the effectiveness of metacognitive therapy (MCT) on reducing test anxiety and changing the metacognitive beliefs of the eleventh and twelfth grade students

Test anxiety is one of the common problems in children and adolescents that reduces their efficiency. Too much anxiety may firstly disrupt studying and memorizing، and finally disturb the performance of individual during the test. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of metacognitive therapy (MCT) on reducing test anxietyand changing the metacognitive beliefs of the eleventh and twelfth grade students. This empirical research uses pretest، posttest and follow-up design for the experimental and control groups. For this purpose، 32 students who visited Razicounseling center in Alborz Province and gained high scores (higher than 12) in Questionnaire Sarason Test Anxiety were selected as sample group and were divided to experimental and control groups through random assignment. For the experimental group metacognitive therapy (Wells -1995 to 1997) was conducted in 10 sessions lasting 45 Minutes. Metacognition Questionnaire-Short Form (MCQ30) Wells and SarasonTest Anxiety questionnaire were used to measure their metacognitive beliefs. Finally data were analyzed via spss software version 16 by use of ANCOVA analysis test. The outcomes showed that test anxiety in the experimental group has declined significantly (P <0/05) after treatment. Also in this group metacognitive beliefs (positive and negative metacognitive beliefs regarding worry، cognitive confidence، need to control thoughts،cognitive selfconsciousness) hassignificantlydeclinedfollowingmetacognitive therapy (P <0/05). After 6 months follow-up were the results significantly (05/0P <) has decreased compared to the pre-test. cognitive therapy led to improved metacognitive beliefs of students، as well as reducing the test anxiety in them.