Instructional strategies to promote metacognition and higher-order thinking skills: The importance of reflection

Developing a highly qualified work force is essential for the US to thrive in the global economy. To better prepare students for success in 21st century work environments, institutions of higher education must help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, such as critical thinking and analysis and integrative learning. Current evidence-based educational reform efforts incorporate active and experiential learning activities to increase student cognitive engagement and higher-order thinking skills. Although these strategies and many others have great potential for helping undergraduates leave college with the higher-order thinking skills needed for career and life success, they must be combined with opportunities for student reflection so as to promote metacognitive selfknowledge and self-regulation to ensure that thinking skills learned in one situation are applied across multiple situations and learning contexts. This chapter explores methods for feasibly promoting this self-reflection into instruction in such a way that greater transfer of critical thinking and other higher-order thinking skills is much more likely to occur. Specifically, the use of self-reflective assignments and the use of rubrics by students throughout the learning process to self-assess their own learning process will be discussed.