Perspective Chapter: Metacognitive Strategies – Preparing Self-Regulated Learners in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, with the enormous increase in volume of information, students suffer from the cognitive overload that has been seen to be associated with incidence of depression/burnout amongst students at various levels of the training phase. This eventually leads to poor performance and lack of confidence in the younger generation. Effective strategies for efficient learning need to be informed to the learners to make them understand the importance of learning and retrieval at appropriate time. One such strategy is educating individuals metacognitively where the students will be able to build strong content knowledge by responding to varying demands of disciplines by critically synthesizing different resources and valuing sound evidence. Teaching students to be metacognitively aware through different strategies is also a challenge for teachers. Teaching students to ask themselves self-reflective questions and assess where they are right now (thinking about what they already know), how they learn (what is working and what is not), and where they want to be. With the aid of metacognition, students will be able to solve problems more effectively and take charge of their learning as self- regulated learners, which is essential in the current time.