The Journal of Medical Education and Development

Introduction: Achieving meaningful learning is an important educational goal of medical students. Therefore, it is necessary to design and implement more effective methods and strategies to achieve the goal. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the meta-cognitive awareness of reading strategies in student and their achievement in Iran University of Medical Sciences.

Methods : This cross sectional- analytic study was carried out on students of Iran University of Medical Science during the 2012-2013 academic years. Three hundred seventeen students were selected through stratified random sampling from all students studied in basic sciences, physiopathology and clerkship stages of the medical program. The tool used was meta-cognitive awareness of reading strategies Inventory (MARSI). Data were analyzed by SPSS 16 software and Pearson correlation-coefficients, variance analysis tests and independent T-tests were administered.

Results: In this study the mean score of medical students' awareness of reading strategies showed optimal situation, the mean score of medical students' awareness of reading strategies and its three categories showed a significant relationship with students' score of academic achievement.

Conclusion: Based on our findings it is concluded the medical students awareness of planning strategy and setting the purpose of reading have more influence on academic achievement than meta-cognition strategies, therefore medical education curriculum should be emphasized on these strategies to empower medical students to be independent in learning and to be self-regulating in their learning process .