The Effect of Metacognition Education Program on Critical Thinking and Moral Judgment of Elementary Students

Development and strengthening of students' intellectual and moral skills has always been one of the essential  goals of educational systems in different countries, so the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of metacognition education program on critical thinking and moral judgment of elementary students.

This quasi-experimental study was performed by pretest and posttest methods and a control group in 2019. The study population was elementary school students in Chalous in the academic year 2019-2020, which was selected by in available sampling method of 30 people and randomly placed in two groups of 15 people intervention and control. Both groups answered the Critical Thinking and Moral Judgment Questionnaire. The intervention group participated in 8 sessions of metacognition training, but the control group did not receive any training. Data analysis was performed using SPSS software version 22 and multivariate and univariate analysis of covariance.

The mean and standard deviation of critical thinking scores before metacognition training in the intervention and control groups were 69.78 ± 6.26 and 70.10 ± 4.91, respectively, which after metacognition training were 80.59 ± 7.57 and 71.84± 5.30. The mean and standard deviation of moral judgment scores before metacognition training in the intervention and control groups were 34.63 ± 1.35 and 34.80 ± 1.63, respectively, which after metacognition training were 39.29 ± 3.33 and 35.33 ± 1.97. Therefore, the results showed that metacognition training increased critical thinking, critical thinking (p <0.01, F = 14.717) and increased moral judgment (P <0.01, F = 23.109).

The study results will draw the attention of experts and educators to ways to improve critical thinking and the development of moral judgment.