\"Educators in the field of visual impairment have addressed some variables such as level of visual impairment, gender, age at onset of visual impairment to consider individual differences on cognitive development and functioning. This study was designed to examine effects of level of visual impairment and gender on the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies among students who are blind or have low vision. The questionnaire of cognitive and metacognitive strategies was used to elicit responses from 154 students who study in special schools for the blind. The results can be summarized as follows; First, the mean scores of students with visual impairments grouped by level of visual impairment and gender were 3.0 among overall cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Second, MANCOVA(multivariate anaylsis of covariance) of scores on cognitive and metacognitive strategies yielded a significant difference only in the elaboration strategy between gender groups. However, there was no main effect of level of visual impairment in any cognitive and metacognitive strategies. There were no significant interaction between level of visual impairment and gender. The results of this study indicate that students who are visually impaired need to learn both cognitive and metacognitive strategies to improve their academic achievement and to increase autonomy in learning and that gender variable should be considered to set of instructions for cognitive and metacognitive strategies.
Key words : visual impairment, cognitive strategy, metacognitive strategy, blind, low vision\"