Abstract

• The main aim of this study was to investigate metacognitive awareness and mathematics anxiety of Grade 10 students in Meikhtila Township. Participants were 994 students from eight schools in Meikhtila Township. The descriptive research design and quantitative survey method were used. In this study, Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) consisting of 44 items (r=0.881) was used to measure the metacognitive awareness of the students. The inventory contained eight dimensions; declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge, planning, information management strategies, comprehension monitoring, debugging strategies and evaluation. And, the next instrument, Mathematics Anxiety Rating Scale developed by Sharia et al. (2015) was used to measure mathematics anxiety of students. It includes 26 items (r=0.879) and consists of two dimensions; cognitive dimension, the worry component and affective dimension, the emotional component. The result of t test showed that there was a significant difference in metacognitive awareness by gender. The metacognitive awareness of female students was higher than that of male students. The result also showed that there was no significant difference in metacognitive awareness by subject combination. The ANOVA result revealed that there were significant differences in metacognitive awareness by schools. Besides, there was no significant difference in mathematics anxiety by gender and by subject combination. As the ANOVA result, there were significant differences in mathematics anxiety between school 2 and school 3, between school 2 and school 4, and between school 3 and school 7. According to the Pearson product-moment correlation, there was a significant negative correlation between metacognitive awareness and mathematics anxiety of Grade 10 students (r= -.162, p<.01). Thus, it can be concluded that the higher level of students’ metacognitive awareness, the lower level of their mathematics anxiety.