Background: Real knowledge is to know one’s ignorance. The ability to identify the existence of lacunae in the learning process by a learner is due to metacognitive awareness. Metacognitive awareness (which is the knowledge of one’s own cognitive process) development is imperative to assist a learner perform optimally, particularly in assessments. A medical student, burdened with the pressures of never ending academics would be wise to cultivate metacognitive skills. In order to cultivate these skills, a baseline evaluation of the existing skills is necessary. Aims: To analyse the role of metacognitive awareness on the academic scores in medical students. The effect of gender on metacognitive awareness and academic scores were also analysed. In this cross-sectional study, all first year medical students studying in a medical college in South India were included using the complete sampling method. Methods: Metacognitive awareness inventory, a validated questionnaire, was administered to all the students. The average academic scores for the whole of first year of medicine in all the subjects were calculated. Results: The results were statistically analysed using ANOVA and independent t test and the software used was SPSS version 22. Depending on the metacognitive awareness scores, students were grouped into 3 categories; low (<50%), average (50-80%) and high (>80%). Awareness was compared to the academic scores and the difference in groups was found to be significant (p<0.01). A gender wise significance was also noted in the low (p<0.05) and average (p<0.01) categories. Conclusion: Metacognitive awareness has an important role to play in determining the academic outcome. Hence, incorporation of metacognitive awareness strategies in the medical curriculum is recommended.
IJCR is following an instant policy on rejection those received papers with plagiarism rate of more than 20%. So, All of authors and contributors must check their papers before submission to making assurance of following our anti-plagiarism policies.
