Searching for the impact of teacher behavior on promoting students' cognitive and metacognitive skills

This study investigates the impact of teaching factors on students' cognitive and metacognitive achievement in mathematics. Written tests and the "Metacognitive Skills and Knowledge Assessment" tool were administered to grade 4 and 5 students (n = 924) at the beginning and end of the school year 2013-2014. A student questionnaire was used for measuring teaching factors. Multilevel SEM analyses revealed a reciprocal relationship between students' cognitive and metacognitive skills. All teaching factors of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness were found to be associated with mathematics achievement but only four factors (modeling, assessment, questioning, and dealing with misbehavior) were associated with two aspects of metacognition (i.e. prediction and evaluation). Implications of findings are drawn.