The role of academic self-efficacy in improving students’ metacognitive learning strategies

Introduction: Metacognitive strategies play an essential role instudents’ learning and achievement; therefore, identifying theirantecedents should be considered. This study indicated howself-efficacy, as motivational beliefs, affects the meta-cognitivestrategies of medical students using a SEM approach.Method: The present study was a quantitative cross-sectionalresearch design, using a Smart-PLS 3 approach in which 225 medicalstudents at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences were selected,using simple random sampling. Pintrich and De Groot’s (1990)students’ self-efficacy for learning and performance questionnaireand metacognitive learning strategies questionnaire developedby Dowson and McInerney (2004) were used to collect data. Thecollected data were analyzed using SPSS 21 and PLS 3 software.Results: The validity and reliability of research questionnaireswere confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. The resultsshowed self-efficacy had a positive and significant relationshipwith planning (r=0.24, P<0.001), monitoring (r=0.30, P<0.001)and regulating (r=0.31, P<0.001). Furthermore, self-efficacy haddirect, positive and statistically significant effect on metacognitivelearning strategies (β=0.42, P<0.001).Conclusion: The findings suggest students who believe theyare capable to learn and to do their academic tasks are moreeffective in adopting meta-cognitive strategies to achievelearning objectives than students who do not maintain suchoptimistic beliefs. Therefore, it is recommended that the officialsof Shiraz University of Medical Sciences provide opportunitiesfor strengthening the students’ self-efficacy and metacognitivelearning strategies through providing training courses. In thesecourses students should be explicitly instructed how a specificlearning strategy is adopted, why it is important and when andhow it applies to the specific task.