Relation between Secondary Schools Students’ Regulation of Cognition and Their Academic Achievement

The study was conducted at secondary schools situated in West Guji Zone, Oromia region, Ethiopia. The purpose of this study was to measure grade nine students’ levels of metacognitive awareness in terms of the regulation of their cognition and its relationship to academic achievement. As part of the study design, a correlational study design was adopted. 10 secondary schools (26.32%) were chosen at random and 392 grade nine students enrolled in 2023/2024 academic year were chosen using a systematic sampling technique. Both descriptive and inferential statistics (correlation and multiple linear regressions) were employed to analyze the data. The findings revealed that the majority of students had modest regulation of cognition. Besides, the correlation between students’ regulation of their cognition and academic achievement ranges from moderate to strong. A moderate positive association was obtained between students’ debugging skills and academic achievement (r =.577, n = 388, p =.000), while high positive correlations were reported for the remaining components. Overall, cognitive regulation had a very substantial positive association with academic achievement (r =.811, p =.000). Moreover, it was found that all aspects of the regulation of cognition were statistically significant predictors of students’ academic performance. This demonstrated the importance of regulation of cognition in optimizing learning. Taking its predicting power of students’ academic achievement into account, this study recommended that educational stakeholders and institutions should employ initiatives to improve students’ regulation of their cognition.