Metacognitive regulation of critical thinking in psychology students

Abstract

Modern people are exposed to vast amounts of information on a daily basis and therefore need to develop a certain resilience to information flows and effective information handling skills. Critical thinking can be of help here. Scientific literature gives no precise definition of critical thinking in methodological terms. Neither has it been empirically compared with other psychological constructs. The main characteristics described for critical thinking bear a formal resemblance to metacognitions, which are marked by adjustability, awareness, and reflexivity. This article draws definitions of critical thinking and metacognitions from contemporary scientific literature, highlighting the signififessional psychologist training. It aims to determine the specifics of the metacognitive regulation of critical thinking in psychology students. The psychodiagnostic battery includes methods focused on measuring critical thinking, characteristics of metacognitive regulation, self-organization and self-regulation features, general intelligence, leading cognitive styles, discursive abilities, as well as an -developed questionnaire studying respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics. Mathematical processing was done based on the methods of descriptive statistics, factor analysis (orthogonal rotation method), and the non-parametric H-criterion (Kruskal–Wallis test) for independent samples. The study sample included a total of 130 stuof Russia, among them 108 women and 22 men. Different types of critical thinking organization were shown to be accompanied by specific properties of metacognitive regulation. Our findings point to the significance of metacognitive processes in critical thinking and their manifestation as part of the critical analysis of information.