Association Between Teachers’ Ability to Foster Cognitive Thinking and School Ranking in Academic Performance

This paper examined the association between teachers’ ability to foster cognitive thinking and school ranking in academic performance. The tendency to rank school performance in academics has been a common practice in Tanzania whereby schools are listed from the highest to the lowest based on the average academic performance of their students. Teachers’ ability to foster variables such as convergent, divergent and metacognitive thinking was measured using TOP among 36 teachers and 444 secondary school students. Data was analyzed using SPSS whereby a t-test analysis revealed that teachers in the schools ranked high than in low academic performing schools demonstrated ability to foster convergent, divergent and metacognitive thinking to their students during teaching learning sessions in the classroom. Difference in timing of the fostering these cognitive thinking was also observed with the ranking categories. It was concluded that conscious efforts by teachers to timely pair fostering of cognitive thinking and academic content is crucial in making difference in academic and school performance. Discussion is made around practical, social and economic implications of the findings and it is recommended that teachers should be reminded through in service trainings to improve their ability to consciously pair fostering of cognitive thinking and academic content during their classroom sessions.