Thinking About Thinking: What Educators Need to Know

Edited by Jessie Ee, Agnes Chang, Oon-Seng Tan, (2004), McGraw-Hill Education (Asia), ISBN 0-00-715133-0, 329 pages

Thinking About Thinking comprehensively provides the latest theories and applications in the field of metacognition and self-regulated learning.

This book is divided into two parts. The first section opens with Barry Zimmerman and Manuel Martinez-Pons’ overview of the effectiveness and extensiveness of students’ self-regulatory process in academic learning. This is followed by discussions on aspects of self-regulated learning ranging from how classroom ecology can aid in the learning of self-regulated strategies to about how a community of inquiry can aid in the dissemination of self-regulated learning strategies in classrooms.

The second section looks at the some of the latest applications and innovations of self-regulated learning and metacognition strategies used in classrooms.

A case for teacher education serves as a starting point for enabling new paradigm shifts towards learning more effectively.

This is followed by a discussion on how the choice of teachers can hinder or improve the progress of self-regulated learning. An emphasis on the importance of teachers as facilitators to guide the students through the process of self-regulatory learning is made next.

The book concludes with a chapter on self-regulated learning strategies and youths with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The chapter introduces several intervention strategies that teachers may use in the process of teaching self-regulating skills to them.

Thinking About Thinking is definitely a book worth reading; it is a treasure of useful insights on teacher thinking. The dynamic combination of both theory and practice of self-regulated learning and metacognition and the simple, straight forward style of writing make this book a joy to read.