**1. Introduction**

This chapter investigates challenges in addressing metacognition in large-scale professional development (PD) programs addressing instruction of higher-order thinking (HOT). The theoretical background will briefly address higher order thinking and metacognition and then turn to discuss teachers' knowledge and professional development in these contexts.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

#### **1.1. Teaching higher-order thinking**

Many studies document the significance of metacognition for students' learning and achievements (e.g., see [1, 2].) The present study explores metacognitive instruction in the area of teaching higher order thinking (HOT). In general terms, HOT refers to cognitive activities that are beyond the stage of recall and comprehension/understanding, according to Bloom's taxonomy [3] and according to more recent revised models [4, 5]. Applying analyzing, evaluating, and creating are key elements at the HOT level. Examples of cognitive activities that are classified as HOT also include constructing and evaluating arguments, asking research questions, dealing with controversies, making comparisons, designing, controlling variables, drawing conclusions, corroborating information sources, and establishing causal relationships [6]. The underlying assumption of this chapter is that HOT must be taught according to the infusion approach, that is, to be integrated with the content and rich conceptual frameworks of the various school subjects [6, 7].

in teaching HOT, let us consider a successful execution of a HOT strategy in science education, for example, variable control. When designing an experiment, students need to know that the task *requires* variable control, to understand *why* variable control should be used (e.g., that without it inferences will be invalid), and to know *how* to control variables (e.g., to change only one variable at a time while keeping the other variables constant). These are components of metacognitive knowledge regarding the when, why, and how of performing the strategy. Alternatively, using the terminology presented earlier, we can say that these components consist of MSK about variable control. However, in order to actually control variables during their experimentation, students also need to plan their actions in a careful way, to monitor their actions in order to see if things are going according to plan, and to evaluate whether they have indeed controlled variables correctly and if their inferences are valid. This evaluation may lead the students to conclude that they need to design a new and better experiment. That is, successful execution of a HOT strategy also requires

Challenges in Addressing Metacognition in Professional Development Programs in the Context…

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Both theoretical and empirical studies support the significance of metacognition for instruction of HOT [15]. The claim that increasing students' MSK enhances strategic thinking implies that it may be fruitful to try teach that knowledge rather than wait until it develops spontaneously. Addressing MSK in the classroom often amounts to helping students see the general thinking structures embedded in the "messy" domain-specific situations they are dealing with. For instance, students may not see any connection between an inquiry activity they are doing in class in the subject of seed germination and an inquiry activity they did a month earlier in the topic of force and motion. The teacher, however, can explicitly point out that both activities share the same features of the inquiry cycle and that the rule they had learned regarding the need to control variables applies in both cases. Using explicit general knowledge pertaining to MSK in teaching thinking is therefore a type of "bridging" activity that

Metacognitive skills (MS) also make substantial contributions to students' thinking. In order to control and regulate their thinking, learners employ MS that draw on their MK regarding cognitive processes [14]. For example, learners need to plan, in the sense that they need to choose which HOT strategy to use among several available strategies, based on task demands.

A deep knowledge of the principles of the educational reform highlighting HOT and metacognition is necessary for successful and thoughtful enactment. Such knowledge must go beyond the acquisition of a fixed set of teaching skills [17], otherwise, teachers will revert to a "mechanical" way of teaching that may preserve external elements of the reform while ignoring its deep core. In the context of the present chapter, the main thing is that teachers need to be highly proficient with specific knowledge that pertains specifically to teaching HOT and metacognition. Like in any other field, in order to teach successfully, teachers need familiarity of whatever it is they attempt to teach as well as sound knowledge of how to teach it. In order to delineate the unique nature of HOT and metacognition, Zohar [6, 15, 18] suggested

MS such as planning, monitoring, evaluating, and regulating.

Then they need to monitor and regulate the use of that strategy.

**1.3. Teachers' knowledge in the context of teaching HOT and metacognition**

may enhance transfer [16].

Despite numerous projects aimed at fostering HOT, most classrooms worldwide are still predominately characterized by pedagogy of knowledge transmission that focuses on lowerorder cognitive levels. Several researchers note that scaling up the "thinking curriculum" is a huge challenge that is still awaiting educational systems all over the world [8, 9]. These studies show that we still need to explore new ways to implement HOT in schools. Metacognition is essential for such implementation efforts.
