Customs Administration Students Usage of Metacognitive Knowledge in their Internships

Abstract

Educators have the responsibility of assessing their students’ metacognitive knowledge and identifying students who may need support in developing effective metacognitive skills and providing them with necessary learning intervention. This study assessed the customs administration students’ metacognitive knowledge and its usage in their internships. The dimensions, declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and conditional knowledge were correlated to academic performance. Differences in metacognitive knowledge and its dimensions and their usage were also ascertained. The study used the descriptive-survey method, using a questionnaire for data gathering. The respondents were 99 randomly selected final year BS in Customs Administration students. The results showed that the majority of students were female, had a capital city based internship and had an average academic performance. The majority of high performers had an internship in a capital city while the majority of low performers had an internship in their home city. Male and female students had similar performance while capital city internship students had better performance than home city internship students. The declarative, procedural and total metacognitive knowledge and their usage were high while conditional knowledge and its usage were very high. The dimensions of metacognitive knowledge and usage, except procedural knowledge had significant relationships with academic performance. Statistical differences in the responses of students when they were grouped according to sex were found only with procedural knowledge and its usage but when they were grouped by internship location – on declarative, procedural and total metacognitive knowledge usage; and when grouped by academic performance – on declarative knowledge, total metacognitive knowledge, conditional knowledge usage and total metacognitive knowledge usage.