Engaging New College Students in Metacognition for Critical Thinking: A Developmental Education Perspective

Teaching students to think critically is one of the major goals of higher education. Many educators at the college level recognize this and expect students to demonstrate critical thinking early in their college experience, however for some students, a lack of preparation for these expectations poses an immediate and substantial challenge during the transition from high school to college. While there is a clear connection between metacognitive activity and quality critical thinking, it is not clear that this connection is explicitly addressed in higher education in general, and especially with first-year college students. Therefore, as new students enter the realm of college learning, there is a need for educators to provide experiences explicitly pertaining to the utility of metacognition for thinking critically. The prospect of targeting new students to provide metacognitive development opportunities clearly fits within the scope of the "National Association for Developmental Education's" definition of developmental education (DE)--that it "includes, but is not limited to, tutoring, personal/career counseling, academic advisement and coursework" (NADE, 2014). This author concludes that DE programs should be teaching first-year college students to use metacognition as a tool to engage in critical thinking.