Metacognition and Decision-Making in Educational Administration: A Study of District Education Officers

Decision-making is the key aspect of the District Education Officers to improve school education. There is hardly any study that elaborates on the decision-making of District Education Officers. On the other side, metacognition is an emerging area in the field of decision-making as it helps in error monitoring, selecting alternatives, and improving decision accuracy. Thus, the growing significance of metacognition in decision-making provides a gateway to studying its role and working in the decision-making of District Education Officers (DEO) including District Inspector of Schools (DIOS) and Basic Education Officer/ Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA). So, the present study explored the role of metacognition and how it works in the decision-making of District Education Officers, including the planning, monitoring, and evaluation dimension of metacognition. The researcher employed the qualitative method while conducting interviews with District Education Officers of Uttar Pradesh, a state of India. Further, the findings of the study highlighted that using metacognition consciously have the potential to enhance decision-making capacity, which in turn helps to address the challenges posed by the complexities involved in the roles and responsibilities performed by District Education Officers.