**3. A brief history of metacognition**

The term metacognition first became part of the lexicon of higher education in the1970's when Flavell (1971) introduced the term 'metamemory'. However, the concept is much older than that (King, 2004) and draws on the work of more ancient philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Solomon, Buddha, and Lao Tzu.

Clearly, the potential importance of developing metacognitive skills was recognised long before the actual term was commonly used, with John Locke commenting in 1690, that most children gradually develop the ability to 'reflect' on their own thinking processes. For example, when young children are asked if they understand something, they often simply nod in agreement or fail to ask questions (Brown, 1973) but by adulthood most of us have a better understanding of the complex processes involved in knowing what we do, and do not, know (Piaget, 1972; Downing, 2009b). Brown (1987) and Hatton & Smith, (1995) report that as early as 1917, Thorndike was testing metacognition by asking his students to problem-solve by answering questions on texts they had read. Consequently, when Flavell (1963) published a text on the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget the as yet unnamed, 'metacogniton' caught the attention of researchers and by 1975 had come into common use. More recently, a number of researchers have begun to explore the validity and reliability of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) as a longitudinal measure of metacognition in university students (Ning & Downing, 2010a) and even posit metacognition as indicative of another stage of intellectual development beyond Piaget's stage of formal operations.
