The Effect of Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning (GRPQ) on Nursing Students' Critical Thinking and Metacognition Skills

Introduction: Fostering critical thinking and Metacognition is one of the most important objectives in nursing education. This study was designed to investigate the effect of guided reciprocal peer questioning on nursing students' critical thinking and Metacognition skills. Methods: In this quasi experimental study, the experiment group included 30 nursing students in their 6th semester in Birjand Islamic Azad University. Two credit courses were presented in this group using guided reciprocal peer questioning. In the control group which included 28 nursing students, those two credit courses were presented using the routine lecture method. California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) (form B) was used for evaluating critical thinking skills, and metacognition was evaluated before and after interven-tion by metacognitive awareness questionnaire. The statistical analysis was done by SPSS software. Descrip-tive statistics, t-independent test, paired t-test Chi-square, Mann Whitney, and Kappa were used in this study. Results: Performing guided reciprocal peer questioning led to a significant increase in critical thinking skills scores in the experiment group compared to the control group. In spite of the increase in the mean score of metacognitive awareness of the experiment group, comparing the mean difference of pre and post tests in the two groups showed no significant difference. Conclusion: Using guided reciprocal peer questioning in the education of nursing students may lead to developing critical thinking skills as one of the important missions of higher education.