The need to cultivate students' use of metacognitive strategies in critical thinking has been emphasized in the related literature. The present study aimed at examining the role of metacognitive strategies in critical thinking. Ten university students with comparable cognitive ability, thinking disposition and academic achievement but with different levels of critical thinking performance participated in the study (five in the high-performing group and five in the low-performing group). They were tested on six thinking tasks using thinkaloud procedures. Results showed that good critical thinkers engaged in more metacognitive activities, especially high-level planning and high-level evaluating strategies. The importance of metacognitive knowledge as a supporting factor for effective metacognitive regulation was also revealed. The contribution of metacognitive strategies to critical thinking and implications for instructional practice are discussed.A critical thinker is one who applies appropriate skills and strategies to achieve a desirable outcome (Halpern 1998). Critical thinking demands strategic use of cognitive skills that best suit a particular situation, as well as an active control of one's own thinking processes for well-justified conclusions. Psychologists and educators strive to understand what differentiates those who think critically and those who fail to do so; however, it has not been an easy task due to the complexity of human thinking processes. As a result, tests of critical thinking usually measure the end-results of thinking processes, i.e., the quality of Metacognition Learning (2010) 5:251-267

This article reviews recent evidences about Chinese students' outstanding academic performance and discusses the major themes and issues arising from the study of their motivational characteristics. Despite Chinese students' high academic achievement, research has shown that they actually display a generally lower sense of efficacy than their Western counterparts. As this article explains, there are at least two ways in which Chinese students differ from their Western counterparts in relation to competence beliefs. Firstly, with academic success being emphasized as a fulfilment of one's duty and achieved through effort, these success experiences may not be as significant a source of self-efficacy as in the Western context. Secondly, the importance of self-efficacy may not be as prominent in producing achievement behaviour as in the West, since there is no demonstrated relationship between their sense of efficacy and effort expenditure.

Previous studies have suggested that Western constructs of academic motivation may operate in different ways in Asian contexts due to differences in the cultural environment. In the present study, the integrative effects of achievement goals, strategy orientations, and effort expenditure on achievement outcomes were examined among 1950 seventh-grade Chinese students in Hong Kong. Participants completed separate questionnaires for mathematics and English. Results for the two subjects were largely similar. There were significant positive relationships between mastery and performance goals, between cooperative and competitive orientations, as well as between understanding and memorizing strategies. Regression analyses further revealed that goals and strategies were highly predictive of effort expenditure, but only goals and effort significantly predicted achievement outcome, with strategies being barely significant. The need to further investigate how Chinese students reconcile the apparently antithetical orientations in learning as well as the effective strategies contributing to their learning is indicated.