Thinking and metacognition

It seems that only until recently, educators (including teachers, lecturers, educational administrators, professors) have shown interests in the overlooked theme 'thinking' in education. For the past 2 years, the concern of including the thinking component into educational courses has increased as revealed by the launch of the Information Technology (IT) Master Plan in education (April, 1997), the National Education program (May, 1997) and the framework of Thinking Schools and Learning Nation (June, 1997). These educational programs intend to shape new avenues to cultivating thinking persons, creative individuals and independent learners. Consequently, schools and educational institutions here organized workshops, seminars and conferences related to the theme 'thinking'. In November 1997 and 1998, the Singapore Educational Research Association annual conference highlighted thinking, IT and creativity. Educational modules include the discussion of problem solving, critical and creative thinking, and metacognition.

In this paper, we would like to share our insights into the theme 'thinking and metacognition'. Our aim is to provide an overview of this crucial topic. Thereby, readers are aroused to explore the theme further on their own and thus to be self-directed learners. We divide our paper into three main sections. In the first section, we describe what thinking is and how thinking is related to learning. In the second section, we define metacognition and its relation to learning. We also discuss the training of metacognitive skills. In the third section, we infer some implications for educators with regard to this specific theme.