Introduction: Persistent abysmal academic achievement among adolescents in Nigerian secondary schools has become a concern among stakeholders in the Nigerian system of education. This, over time, has been linked to poor reading culture and reading skills, worsened by unproductive instructional approaches adopted by teachers for reading proficiency. An investigation into effective instructional approaches to arm adolescents with metacognitive skills for reading proficiency becomes imperative. This study, therefore, investigated the impact of cooperative learning and teacher-directed learning approaches on secondary school students' development of metacognitive skills for reading proficiency. Method: We adopted a quasi-experimental research design in our study. One hundred and eighteen early adolescent students were sampled from three public secondary schools in Anambra state. The instrument used in the study is an open-ended metacognitive skill for reading proficiency questionnaire (OMSRPQ). Three operations were used for the experiment: 1) task understanding, 2) strategy understanding, and 3) management of learning process. The sum of these three operations is the overall metacognitive skills of the students. Results. Our findings showed that students in cooperative integrated reading and composition (CIRC) learning approach differed significantly from those in the teacher-directed instructional (DI) approach and the control group (C1) in task understanding operation F (2,118) = 8.783, p <0.01, strategy understanding F(2,118) = 6.324, p <0.01and the overall metacognitive reading skills F(2, 118) = 7.047, p < 0.01. No significant mean differences occurred among the groups in management of learning process skills F (2,118) = 2.949, p >.05. Adjusted omega squared (est. [omega][superscript 2]) test showed large to moderate effect sizes in the operations that were significant. Discussion and Conclusion: We concluded that metacognitive skills for reading could be better enhanced in cooperative learning approach. Based on these findings, the researchers recommended that CIRC can be used in developing metacognitive skills needed in secondary school reading classrooms.