Metacognitive Skills and Cognitive Skills in Engineering and Medical Students

Metacognition refers to the ability to reflect upon, understand and control one, s learning. This study focused on three related issues: (a) whether there was empirical support for the two-factor view of metacognition, (b) whether the two factors were related to each other, and (c) whether either of the factors was related to empirical measures of cognitive and metacognitive performance. To test the current conceptualization of metacognition that assumes two main factors covariance analysis (confirmatory factor analysis) was conducted. Amos (Analysis of moment structures) was used as the statistical package. Two experiments on Medical and Engineering students supported the two–factor model. Factors were correlated. Further experiments reported a number of statistically significant relationships among knowledge of cognition, regulation of cognition and pre-test post-test judgment ability. The correspondence between knowledge of cognition and performance for medical students indicated that those individuals who scored high on knowledge of cognition factor also scored high on final exam. The correspondence between regulation of cognition and performance for engineering students indicated that students who scored high on regulation of cognition factor also scored high on final exam. The findings reported here indicate that although the two groups of students had different mental behavior, their metacognitive abilities played a significant role in their educational achievements.