An Assessment of the Level and Patterns of Metacognition among Dental Students in a Northwestern Nigerian University

Abstract

Objective: Metacognition is a recognized means of self- motivation, and may be measured by the use of the Metacognitive Awareness  Index (MAI). This study sought to perform a situational analysis of the levels of metacognitive awareness among dental students at the University and relate this to selected socio-demographic factors to aid student mentoring.

Methods: The MAI questionnaire and eleven questions retrieving selected sociodemographic data were electronically administered on  consenting dental students of the University. Retrieved data was entered into a spreadsheet and analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics  (version 23). Frequencies were recorded, means were generated and compared by crosstabulation. The level of significance was set at  p<0.05 

Results: 81.9% of the student population participated in the study. There were 68 (60.2%) males and 45 (39.8%) females. 14(12.4%)  of the cohort were married. The mean MAI score was 42.2 (81.2%) with a standard deviation of 8.5 (16.3%). The best  performances were recorded for de-bugging strategies 92.0% (22.0%), while declarative knowledge recorded the worst performances  71.3% (22.5%). Males outperformed females without statistical significance (p=0.066) and married students were strongly outperformed  by their unmarried counterparts (p=0.000). the first year and final year students performed better than students from the other classes (p=0.045). the MAI scores increased with increasing age (p=0.023), while the accommodation of the students did not impact their scores  (p=0.317). 

Conclusion: The level of metacognitive awareness recorded was very good. However, mentors should pay particular attention  to married students and students outside the first and final year classes