When will they know what they don’t know? Political knowledge and the infamous “Unskilled and Unaware” effect

• Students with little political knowledge tend to overestimate their level of political knowledge. • Similar patterns of overestimation emerge among low-performing students in both Grade 7 and Grade 10. • Perceived teacher behavior is associated with students’ judgement accuracy and direction. • This study found no support among adolescents for interpreting the unskilled and unaware effect as a metacognitive deficit. The unskilled and unaware effect, also known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, describes that low performers tend to overestimate and high performers tend to underestimate their ability and that on average low performers provide less accurate estimates of their ability than high performers. Based on data from N = 1047 students in Grade 7 ( n = 613) and Grade 10 ( n = 434), we examined whether the unskilled and unaware effect exists with regard to high school students’ political knowledge, whether the effect is different in Grade 7 and Grade 10, and how teachers’ behavior (i.e., cognitively activating and motivating teaching) affects students’ judgement accuracy and judgement direction. The results show that the unskilled and unaware effect exists in both grade levels. Furthermore, visual and statistical examination of the data suggest that the pattern of data is very similar in both grade levels. Finally, we further find that perceived motivational quality is associated with judgement accuracy, but also with overconfidence. Perceived cognitive activation is negatively associated with judgement accuracy. Through the usage of two-cohort data, this study applies a novel approach and bears important implications for research on the unskilled and unaware effect. Furthermore, the results regarding the teachers’ behavior provide important insights for educational practice in civic education.