Exploring the metacognitive awareness level of EFL instructors

The main aim of the present study is to explore the metacognitive awareness level of EFL instructors. To this end, it also aims at examining whether there is a significant difference in the metacognitive awareness level of the EFL instructors in terms of their age, graduation degree, the number of years of teaching experience, and the number of training courses received for professional development. The study has a non-experimental quantitative research design. It was conducted with 161 voluntary EFL instructors who work in the Preparatory Classes of the School of Foreign Languages at the foundation higher education institutions in Ankara, Turkey, during the 2020–2021 academic year. The data collection tools were a Demographic Information Form developed by the researcher and a self-report instrument entitled the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory for Teachers (the MAIT) devised by Balçıkanlı (2011). The MAIT, a Likert-type scale with 24 items, represents two major dimensions of metacognition: knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. Knowledge of cognition includes the three general types of knowledge (i.e. declarative, procedural, and conditional) whereas regulation of cognition consists of metacognitive skills (i.e. planning, monitoring, and evaluating). The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. The results revealed that the EFL instructors have a high level of metacognitive awareness. While the mean score obtained for the declarative knowledge subcategory was found to be the highest, the lowest score was obtained in the evaluating subcategory. The results also showed that there was a significant difference between the subcategories of the metacognitive awareness of the EFL instructors according to the above-mentioned variables of interest. The study concludes with suggestions for further research and practice.