Int J Cur Res Rev | Vol 13 • Issue 24 • December 2021 81 A Study of the Association between Learning Strategies and Academic Performance in Physiotherapy Students Manasi N. Desai 1 , Unnati Pandit 2 , Amruta Nerurkar 3 , Chhaya Verma 4 1 PhD Scholar, D. Y. Patil School of Physiotherapy, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India; 2 Professor and Director of D. Y. Patil School of Physiotherapy, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India; 3 Associate Professor and Head of Department of Neuro physiotherapy, D. Y. Patil School of Physiotherapy, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India; 4 Professor and the Head of Department of Physiotherapy, T. N. Medical College, B. Y. L. Nair Charitable Hospital, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Corresponding Author: Dr. Manasi Desai (PT), Building No. 35, 2nd foor, Rajpurkar House, Mangalwadi, Of JSS Road, Girgaon, Mumbai-400004, India. Tel: +91-9004673289; Email: manasind11@gmail.com ISSN: 2231-2196 (Print) ISSN: 0975-5241 (Online) Received: 21.05.2021 Revised: 12.07.2021 Accepted: 18.09.2021 Published: 13.12.2021 INTRODUCTION Wittrock (1977) 1 defined learning as practices that lead to transforming through experience. It is the process of gaining a fairly permanent change in comprehension, information, knowledge, outlook, skill and aptitude through experience. It is widely accepted that the process of learning requires the participation of the learner on a conscious or unconscious, implicit or explicit level to receive and process sensory input and incorporate it in some form into memory. 2 Each educational field provides different learning settings and tasks. For instance, physiotherapy programs provide dif- ferent course objectives which provide the framework and overview for practising physical therapy. Within this frame- work, students have similar learning experiences including lectures as well as practical training in evaluation, diagnosis, the use of therapeutic modalities, manual therapy, and over- all rehabilitation for a range of impairments. 3 The role of universities in the modern era, and scientific re- search to gain an insight into how people learn is of utmost importance. 4 The main goal for higher education is to train, enable, and inspire students to learn. 5 To accomplish these goals, factors associated with student learning should be ex- plored and evaluated in-depth. These factors can be divided into two broad categories: a) those related to students’ characteristics, such as learning Original Research International Journal of Current Research and Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31782/IJCRR.2021.132405 IJCRR Section: Healthcare ISI Impact Factor (2019-20): 1.628 IC Value (2019): 90.81 SJIF (2020) = 7.893 Copyright@IJCRR ABSTRACT Introduction: Learning strategies consist of a student’s implicit and explicit actions, beliefs and habits that influence how they comprehend and learn. The current study intended to assess this parameter in physiotherapy students and to explore whether an association exists between learning strategies and academic performance. Materials and Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional survey was carried out over a period of 6 months in five Physiotherapy colleges. 343 students participated after giving informed consent. The learning strategies section of the Motivational Strategies of Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was used to assess learning strategies. Overall percentage score in the previous year’s final University exam was considered as a measure of academic performance. A correlation matrix was used to investigate the relationship between the two parameters, and a multivariate regression analysis was carried out to create a model to predict academic performance based on their learning strategies. Data were entered in MsExcel (© Microsoft, USA) and converted to Stata Version 15.1 © StataCorp, College Station for analysis. Results: Physiotherapy students reported lowest mean scores on critical thinking (mean=3.78+1.13), metacognitive self-regula- tion (mean=3.76+1.01) and effort regulation (mean=3.76+ 0.99) and moderate scores on time/study environmental management (mean=4.10+ 0.80). Conclusion: Essential learning strategies such as critical thinking and metacognitive self-regulation, as well as resource man- agement strategies such as effort regulation and time management, were deficient in physiotherapy students. A curriculum that emphasizes and teaches learning strategies along with professional skills seems to be the need of the hour of physiotherapy students. Key Words: Learning, Physiotherapy, Time management, Academic success, Metacognition, Critical thinking