[EN]More and more often, we hear that higher education should foment critical thinking. The
new skills focus for university teaching grants a central role to critical thinking in new study
plans; however, using these skills well requires a certain degree of conscientiousness and
its regulation. Metacognition therefore plays a crucial role in developing critical thinking
and consists of a person being aware of their own thinking processes in order to improve
them for better knowledge acquisition. Critical thinking depends on these metacognitive
mechanisms functioning well, being conscious of the processes, actions, and emotions
in play, and thereby having the chance to understand what has not been done well and
correcting it. Even when there is evidence of the relation between metacognitive processes
and critical thinking, there are still few initiatives which seek to clarify which process
determines which other one, or whether there is interdependence between both. What
we present in this study is therefore an intervention proposal to develop critical thinking
and meta knowledge skills. In this context, Problem-Based Learning is a useful tool to
develop these skills in higher education. The ARDESOS-DIAPROVE program seeks to
foment critical thinking via metacognition and Problem-Based Learning methodology. It
is known that learning quality improves when students apply metacognition; it is also
known that effective problem-solving depends not only on critical thinking, but also on
the skill of realization, and of cognitive and non-cognitive regulation. The study presented
hereinafter therefore has the fundamental objective of showing whether instruction in
critical thinking (ARDESOS-DIAPROVE) influences students’ metacognitive processes.
One consequence of this is that critical thinking improves with the use of metacognition.
The sample was comprised of first-year psychology students at Public University of the
North of Spain who were undergoing the aforementioned program; PENCRISAL was
used to evaluate critical thinking skills and the Metacognitive Activities Inventory (MAI) for
evaluating metacognition. We expected an increase in critical thinking scores and
metacognition following this intervention. As a conclusion, we indicate actions to incentivize
metacognitive work among participants, both individually via reflective questions and
decision diagrams, and at the interactional level with dialogues and reflective debates
which strengthen critical thinking.
