Evaluation of metacognitive awareness of reading strategies among medical students

Abstract

Background- Medical students are expected to be skilled readers and continuous learners. For a lifelong learner, metacognitive awareness of reading strategy is a necessary skill to obtain good academic outcome. The present study was done to evaluate the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies of first year medical students. Aims: To analyze the overall metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and also the subscales like global reading strategies, problem solving and support reading strategies in first year medical students and the impact of gender on these. Methods: Metacognitive awareness of reading strategies inventory (MARSI), a validated tool was administered to all the willing participants of the study group. The data obtained was analyzed using chi square and paired t test. Results: The overall metacognitive awareness of reading strategies was found to be high in our students. Problem solving strategies was utilized most followed by support reading strategies and global reading strategies. On comparing the influence of the sexes, it was noticed that females use better overall reading strategies which was significant. On comparing subscales, both the genders prefer using problem solving skills while the other subscales are used more by females. Conclusion: From our study we conclude that our learners have good metacognitive awareness regarding reading skills but does the skill turn into practice to achieve good academic scores remains to be seen. We suggest that curriculum should be so designed to help the students use all the subscales and hence all the strategies to become effective learners. Key words: MARCI, Medical students, Global strategies, Problem solving strategies, Support reading strategies.