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The Metacognitive Competency: The Key to Lifelong Learning

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Remediation in Medical Education

Abstract

The topic of remediation requires that we sharpen our focus on the endpoint of medical education. As educators we are compelled to address the question: Are we in the business of fostering our learners’ minimum competence or are we promoting expertise? Regarding the former, medical school applicants uniformly demonstrate the ability to achieve competence in knowledge acquisition and basic application of knowledge. Our entrance exams in these areas are thorough, valid, and reliable. There is less evidence that our applicants have the ability to achieve expertise as demonstrated in their metacognitive abilities—to think critically, reflect in action, and take another’s perspective. Although there are promising new practices (e.g., holistic admissions), there is yet evidence of their ultimate impact. Those who have significant metacognitive learning difficulties often “fly under the radar screen” until they enter the clinical training environment and are required to excel at experiential learning and undergo less timely and objective assessment. Clinical expertise, all expertise in fact, demands proficiency in these abilities. This chapter provides faculty with a schema for assessing and addressing the metacognitive difficulties that learners may be experiencing that require remediation on the road to expertise.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. American Medical Association and University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA

    Mark Quirk Ed.D.

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  1. Mark Quirk Ed.D.
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Correspondence to Mark Quirk Ed.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Office of Medical Education, Department of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA

    Adina Kalet

  2. Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, San Francisco, California, USA

    Calvin L. Chou

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Quirk, M. (2014). The Metacognitive Competency: The Key to Lifelong Learning. In: Kalet, A., Chou, C. (eds) Remediation in Medical Education. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9025-8_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9025-8_13

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