This construct of self-evaluation is known as metacognition. Thus, metacognition can be defined as the ability of individuals in a situation to understand, aware and regulate their own knowledge, thoughts and performance on tasks (Flavell, 1979; Garner & Alexander, 1989). In other words, metacognition focuses on one’s own cognitive process in order to take conscious control of planning, analysing, monitoring and evaluating strategies to achieve its purpose effectively (Flavell, 1979; Kincannon et al., 1999; Dunlop, 2005).
There are two main components of metacognition: metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation (Flavell, 1987). Metacognitive knowledge includes an individual’s knowledge, demand of the task and potentially effective learning strategies whist metacognitive regulation concerns mental acts of a person to study in order to plan, monitor and evaluate learning strategies. Therefore, metacognitive strategies involve both cognitive and emotional skills that are crucial for the development of students’ high-order thought processes in a variety of domains (Eichbaum, …show more content…
Some studies have demonstrated that students with good metacognitive skills can better assess their own knowledge and perform in their studies that optimise their learning success (Flavell, 1979; Sternberg, 1985; Brown, 1994; Kuiper, 2002; Ku & Ho, 2010; Edelbring, 2012). Students should have effectively utilised evidence that they are knowledgeable and aware of what is needed to meet their learning goals (Thomas, 2003). Moreover, metacognition can help learners to become more adaptable and flexible to deal with ambiguities and changes of information (Hong, Vadivelu, Daniel, & Sim, 2015). In healthcare education, metacognition can support learners’ thinking in complexity and uncertainty of clinical practice (Kuiper, 2002; Zulkilply et al., 2008). Students can improve their critical thinking (Mango, 2010), problem solving (Kuiper, 2002) and decision making skills (Ewell-Kumar, 1998; Zimmerman & Schunk,