Home Environment and Metacognitive Ability: A Dimension-Specific Study of Senior Secondary Students in Ghaziabad

Abstract

Although the family unit has long been recognised as a formative influence on adolescent cognition, the specific pathways through which discrete parenting dimensions shape metacognitive ability remain empirically under charted, particularly within the Indian educational milieu. Drawing on an ex-post facto research design, this study examined the differential impact of ten home environment dimensions—Control, Protectiveness, Punishment, Conformity, Social Isolation, Reward, Deprivation of Privileges, Nurturance, Rejection, and Permissiveness—on the metacognitive ability of 150 senior secondary students enrolled in five C.B.S.E.-affiliated schools in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. Data were gathered using the Home Environment Inventory (Mishra, 1989) and the Metacognition Inventory (Govil, n.d.), and subjected to independent-samples t-tests. Results revealed significant group differences for five dimensions: Deprivation of Privileges (t = 3.0153, p = .003), Conformity (t = -2.4959, p = .014), Protectiveness (t = -2.4681, p = .015), Reward (t = -2.2096, p = .029), and Control (t = -1.9802, p = .050). Notably, high privilege deprivation was inversely associated with metacognitive scores, constituting the study's most consequential finding. Dimensions of Punishment, Social Isolation, Nurturance, Rejection, and Permissiveness yielded non-significant results. These findings underscore that home-based metacognitive scaffolding operates selectively through structural and motivational parenting dimensions, rather than uniformly across all familial features. Implications for parents, classroom educators, and educational counsellors are discussed.