Comparing metacognitive reading strategies among university students from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic

Students' uses of metacognitive reading strategies are an important part of effective learning during university studies. Universities may place varied emphasis on the use of different strategy types, and the students employ them accordingly. A purpose of this study was to examine the use of analytic and pragmatic reading strategies by university students from a cross-cultural perspective. Data were collected about students pursuing education study programmes in four Central European countries, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic (n = 2692), with the assumption of finding convergent results. Another purpose of this study was to examine the association between students' ratings of the metacognitive reading strategies and their demographic and academic characteristics. The research instrument was the Metacognitive Reading Strategies Questionnaire translated into the national languages of students. Generally, the study confirmed similar results among the participating universities. The closest are the findings about the dominance of pragmatic metacognitive reading strategies over the analytic ones, no difference between the genders in the rating of analytic strategies and a female preference for pragmatic strategies. Other demographic and academic characteristics did not demonstrate such strong converging tendencies among universities in the rating of metacognitive learning strategies as gender, but they contributed in creating a complex picture of university students' learning.