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 selfmotivation,
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 sociodemographic
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