Does metacognitive knowledge mediate the relation between goal orientations and educational achievement in secondary school students?

Introduction. Student's metacognitive knowledge as well as their goal orientations are related to educational achievement. Metacognitive knowledge enables the learner to choose learning strategies in such a way that they are situation-appropriate as well as efficient. It develops in conjunction with domain-related learning activities, which in turn are influenced by students' goal orientations. This leads to the assumption that goal orientations differentially influence the development of metacognitive knowledge, and that the latter mediates the effect of goal orientations on educational achievement. Method. Respective hypotheses were tested using data from a longitudinal study with 928 German secondary school students in which goal orientations were assessed in grade five and metacognitive knowledge and educational achievement in the domains of reading and English as a foreign language (EFL) were repeatedly tested from grade five to seven. Results. Findings indicate that learning goal orientation had a positive impact on metacognitive knowledge and on achievement in reading, which was mediated by metacognitive knowledge. The opposite was found for performance goal orientation, which focuses on the demonstration of competence and the intention to outperform others. Conclusion. Learning goal orientation not only affects achievement directly but also indirectly through a positive effect on metacognitive knowledge. Performance orientation does not have a positive effect on the relation between metacognitive knowledge and performance.