Association between Metacognitive Awareness of Pediatric Nursing Students and Their Academic Achievement: A Correlational Study

Abstract

Background: Metacognition is a crucial skill for critical thinking and selfregulation particularly for pediatric nursing students, which can affect and help to monitor and regulate thinking, understanding, and problem-solving. Purpose:To assess the association between metacognitive awareness of pediatric nursing students and their academic achievement. Design: A descriptive correlational research design was utilized. Setting: Faculty of Nursing, Damanhour University, Egypt. Sampling: A purposive sample of 150 pediatric nursing students in second semester of academic year 2022-2023. Instruments: two instruments were used namely; Metacognitive Awareness Inventory and The Pediatric Nursing Achievement Test. Results: The mean total score of overall total meta-cognitive awareness level was 33.06 + 13.155, while the mean total score of total achievement level was 19.84+4.03. Furthermore, a statistical very highly significant strong positive correlation was found between total students' achievement levels and their overall meta-cognitive awareness, where r = 0.877 and p< 0.001. Conclusion: There is a strong positive association between metacognitive awareness of pediatric nursing students and their academic achievement. Recommendations: Teachers should be trained to pose classroom questions to increase students' metacognition awareness and achievement, as well as the number of course hours in which students are left in real life situations trying to solve problems, use higher level cognitive skills in Bloom Taxonomy and use their reflective thinking skills should be increased.